A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System

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In 1954 the terms “working class” and “poor” were not synonymous but, leaving that aside, Hitchens fails to explain that the reason for this report was the government’s concern that working class children who passed the 11+ and went to grammar school were not taking advantage of the opportunities offered to them – hence the report’s official title: “Early Leaving”. The unapologetic method used to describe selective education could bring about a conversation on the structure of the modern educational system.

His overall point is probably the right one: that you can have better education I'd you target it at those who need it, not at those who can't, and that trying to create a fully comprehensive, fully egalitarian system tends to produce the second outcome, not the first. It sees the destruction of the emerging grammar school system as an unforgiveable and irreparable act of cultural vandalism, which cannot simply be remedied by an expansion of the last remaining grammar schools. I found plenty that I previously didn’t know, but would probably get more pleasure from seeing the arguments thoroughly debated.It is a world that, despite the undoubted challenges and inequalities of our current educational reality, I am deeply thankful not to inhabit. Naturally, Hitchens largely ignores the Crowther Report of 1959, whose information was based upon much more comprehensive studies than those of Gurney- Dixon, including a detailed survey of all young men entering National Service between 1956 and 1958.

Mail on Sunday columnist Hitchens ( The Abolition of Britain) contends in this cranky screed that efforts to level the playing field in British education have backfired. In other places, it seems to be the size of schools that is key, with both grammars and secondary moderns being seen as successful because they were much smaller than comprehensives. And what's more, it is a system riddled with anomalies - Sixth Form Colleges select pupils on ability at the age of 15, which rules out any child who does not have major educational backing from home (heavy involvement by working parents or private tutors, for example) and academies also are selective, though they pretend not to be.

At the same time the parasite grammar that I was down to go to was having an entire new science block added to it. If obliged to confront this inconvenient fact, Hitchens would probably argue, without evidence, that the degree examinations are in some way “biased” towards the state educated, thanks to the machinations of “egalitarians”. If, in 1956, there had been an expansion of grammar schools to meet the baby bulge then this green and pleasant land would have been preserved and led to the abolition of nearly all private education. that it was only to be expected that the children of the poor would be under- represented in grammar schools: Being based on merit, grammar schools…would obviously favour those classes in society that are ambitious and can only attain their aims through merit and hard work.

A subject that is now rather unfashionable and little understood by the British public, but worth a read for anyone with interest in the debate over academic selection and social mobility. There is quite a good section about the dilution of academic standards that has taken place since the qualifications on offer were altered to fit the new system.

In his conclusions, Crowther states flatly that “a majority of the sons of professional people go to selective schools but only a minority of manual workers’ sons do so” and he adds that “a non- manual worker’s son is nearly three times as likely to go to a selective school as a manual worker’s”. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.