I haven’t thought about grammar schools for ages. There was a while, about two-ish years ago, when I thought about them a lot. Thought about them, wrote about them, and argued about whether or not they were a good thing, who they benefited and who they disadvantaged.

I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan.

I can see why people are, though. Everyone likes the story. The boy or girl done good, and look at them now. Overcoming the odds is, after all, one of the fundamental stories we tell ourselves, and the happy ending makes us feel good. You never know, if it could happen for them, it could happen for us - that sort of thing. 

Or, if they aren’t us, then we like to be inspired. The Paralympics, and the fine line the TV adverts and coverage tread, is an almost perfect example. Isn’t it amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it? (But let’s not think about the many, many disabled people who live precarious lives, economically, socially and in terms of their health.) 

A feel-good, feel-better story

Or, to come back to grammar schools and education, isn’t it wonderful what young people can achieve, given the right support (or the right sort of school)?

The traditional press coverage of education at this time of year is full of children and young people, in a rather Harry Potter fashion now I come to think about it, opening envelopes and being transformed by the contents. It’s a feel-good, feel-better story, and we all need those.

How different is this year. Instead of hugs and leaps into the air, filmed and photographed without an ounce of irony, the opening of that envelope has heralded a bitter disbelief. Rather than finding themselves at the mercy of a bad day, a misread question or nerves, young people have discovered an unequal system exposed - and, worse, one that is propped up by an algorithm (probably a bell curve). 

It’s been deeply distressing and astonishing for all concerned. So much so that, in the middle of a pandemic, it has dominated the news for more than a week now. 

GCSE and A-level results: Disappointment and disbelief

We’ve heard story after story of disappointment and disbelief. Students predicted A*A*A* have missed out on being the first person in their family, their school, to go to Cambridge.

It’s been awful to see these bright young hopes dashed. It’s as if they, like the grammar-school kids, have become symbolic of all the young people (and their families) this year who’ve seen their certainties whipped away. 

The idea that if we work hard and play by the rules then we will succeed, that we live in a meritocracy, has been exposed for what it is - the Covid crisis has shown us the cracks in our society that we usually ignore. The NHS, adult and children’s social care, the precarious state of a service economy and now exams. The grimness of it all is ably highlighted by their stories. 

We’ve watched this government’s Department for Education (not unlike the Department of Health) stagger from one crisis to another, with a growing sense of disbelief that no one seems willing to resign.

Are the high performers the only ones who matter? 

But here’s the thing. While these stories are dramatic and tragic and all the other things that make good copy, there is a danger, as in the Paralympics ad, that the high performers - especially the ones who have overcome almost unimaginable obstacles - become the only ones who matter.

Or, worse: that somehow, if you (or your child) aren’t one of the golden few who managed to beat the odds and rescue themselves out of disadvantage through doing well at school, you can’t have tried hard enough, so you got what you deserved.

It’s as if we are still pretending that a young person going to an elite university is going to make up for years of disadvantage in the form of housing, diet, transport and access to libraries and family centres, green outdoor spaces and all the other things that go towards making up a good start in life. (I don’t have room here to discuss gender, race or class, but we know about them, don’t we?)

It’s as if going to university is the only thing that matters. If we aren’t careful, we perpetuate the myth that the aim of the education system is to aid social mobility for the few who have done well and have somehow deserved their success - with the flipside being that those who didn’t, don’t. We run the risk of justifying a lack of support in terms of who deserves it and who doesn’t.

And more, we ignore the story that, year in, year out, children are labelled by a system that requires a quota of failure to justify its own integrity. I don’t know about you, but I took it to heart years ago and I still believe it today. Every child matters, and they all need our support.

Nancy Gedge is Tes SEND columnist, coordinator of the Ormerod Resource Base at the Marlborough School, Woodstock, and author of Inclusion for Primary School Teachers