The government has just given the go-ahead for the Weald of Kent grammar school to build a “satellite” school. Nine miles away. Nine! That’s another school, isn’t it? A new grammar school. Surely, that’s not on anymore? Well, there’s a catch. It’s an “annexe”. Ah. Of the old school. Ah.
A new grammar by stealth? Are the floodgates opening for more? No, not at all, Nicky Morgan assures us, this is just a “one-off”.
Big pigs fly high over Big Ben.
Tricky stuff all this – grammar schools, the 11-plus and selection. It still prompts much passionate discussion in the public and much cognitive dissonance in me – or some serious ambivalence.
I am a Grammar School Boy. The Royal Grammar High Wycombe. I passed the 11-plus. I was pleased and bereft. I left my blubbing chums forever. They left me. They were “good with their hands”. I was “good with my brain”. Such a facile and callous divide. It’s all wrong.
I did alright. The RGS is in my DNA. It was a dreadful place, but I flourished. I jumped social classes, working to middle, and all for free. Without the RGS, I wouldn’t have taught in comprehensives. I wouldn’t be writing this. Stop smirking at the back.
And I wouldn’t have to endure precious soirees with the North London chattering classes, obsessing and neurosing about Education and Selection and Sacrificing their Children on the Altar of Liberal Principles and Bringing Back Grammar Schools. Dear me, the friction gets fractious – friends can get divided, evenings ruined, plates smashed and divorces hatched.
“What do you think?” I’m quizzed. “Well, grammar schools are divisive, snobbish, priggish, classist, smug, dull, and immoral. They cause savage inequality and feelings of failure. One grammar school equals three Secondary Moderns! It’s wrong to select at 11 or any other age. Apart from that...”
I rant on. “It’s worse today. Grammar schools are now the preserve of the sharp-elbowed middle class, who flag up the liberal bollix at dinner parties then play the system and scuttle off to selective schools.”
Pause. “But... but... I learned things. I can do you conditionals, ablative absolutes, dates of kings and diphthongs. I can scan Milton, translate Ovid, quote John Masefield – and bowl a googly!
“A downside was getting beaten up by my former ‘failing’ chums for being a tedious swot, a sissy in shorts, and a vile traitor!”
Grammar schools for the few are indefensible. “Grammar schools for all,” like the Labour party promised in 1964, might be the answer. Scrap Trident and it’s possible. Large pigs fly over an “annexe” somewhere in Kent.
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.