In my three years as schools minister, the continued existence of 163 grammar schools was always an embarrassment to me. The evidence that they constrain social mobility is so clear, and yet getting rid of them was always in the “too difficult” drawer. To see the Theresa May’s government wanting to expand selection is therefore deeply shocking.

On one level, it may seem a bit rich for me to want to close down grammar schools. My mother’s father left a Sisters of Mercy school at age 13 to work as a locksmith in Wolverhampton. She, however, made it to grammar school, which projected her into the professional classes, working in a bank and marrying my father, who left grammar school to become an accountant. 

As professionals, they could then afford the luxury of buying me and my brother the privilege of a private education. That allowed me to get into the University of Cambridge and could be painted as a great social mobility story from locksmith to lord.

Price of privilege

But that mobility was at the expense of the majority who were denied entry to the professions or university because of a test they took at 10 or 11. As a minister, I wanted everyone to have the chances I had, not just a privileged few. 

I now think the economic arguments are as pressing as the social justice ones. The international education debate focuses on how we project schooling into the future, rather than harking back to the past. With Foxconn laying off 60,000 Chinese staff because robots are cheaper than $5-a-day workers, we know that we can no longer educate people to a level sufficient only for factory work.

Any progressive government is now bound to question how we individualise education to bring out the talent of every child, so they can survive in a labour market competing globally and against robots. Narrowing choices for the majority at 11 is the opposite of a schooling system designed around the needs of learners that we now require, and that the rest of the world is trying to create.

Politics trumps education

So what would any future Labour government do if the current one expands selection?

It is worth reflecting on why this issue was in the “too difficult drawer”. 

There are times when education is trumped by politics - that seems to consistently be the case with grammar schools. 

Ten years ago, it was projected that the political fallout of closing the remaining selective schools was too great for the educational gain. Labour MPs representing selective areas were terrified that it would cost them their seats; incidentally, I can’t think of any Labour MPs in such areas now.

My impression was that any parent or grandparent with a child in grammar school passionately wanted their retention. Unfortunately, it also seemed that aspirant parents of younger children also wanted to keep grammar schools, because their local non-selective schools weren’t what they wanted for their children.

Seen as a narrow issue

As ministers, the agreed line was that there were more important things than this narrow issue affecting just 163 schools. Of course, this was a flawed position. For every grammar school there are normally at least two other non-selective secondaries whose intake is affected. As a Dorset MP, I also saw the distorting effect as aspirational parents bordering Poole and Bournemouth tried to get places at their grammar schools.

Clearly selection is therefore a bigger distortion on current schooling than we were willing to admit.

But if this government takes this question out of the “too difficult drawer” and brings it back into the mainstream, it will be too big an issue for progressives to ignore.

My prediction is that, ironically, Ms May could be accelerating the total demise of grammar schools.

Middle-class terror

Assuming her government manages to railroad the proposals through Parliament, we will see all communities affected by selection. The amount of private tutoring will explode, private schools will join the maintained sector as grammar schools, and elsewhere they will expand to educate those who missed getting into the grammars. The middle-class terror of their kids ending up in the sink schools will be palpable.

Eventually, the Conservatives will be defeated. I predict that a progressive incoming government will then get elected with a mandate to abolish all grammar schools. 

Rather than reset things back to 2016, that government will want to engineer some significant change to schooling to finally align the system to the needs of every child and the ever-changing labour market.

Such a change will be another huge disruption to the system. 

If it is any consolation, I also predict that we will have to wait a long time for a progressive government to be formed. In the meantime, I fear we will have to live with the abomination of selection for some time yet.

Jim Knight is chief education adviser to TES Global, parent company of TES, and a former Labour schools minister. He tweets as @jimpknight

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