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Peter Edwards: Sorry, Hazel, but your patronising 11-plus views are 'totally unacceptable'
I HAVE a confession to make. If you are offended easily then please look away now.
I failed the 11-plus. I know, it's terrible, isn't it? It's amazing that I've managed to achieve anything in my life with such a blot on my CV. You should take pity on me; I'm sure Hazel Blears would.
You see, it was the recently departed Communities Secretary who painted this bleak vision of a world of educational haves and have-nots. Hers is a society divided by whether or not you went to a grammar school.
While Ms Blears will be remembered for her role in the death throes of New Labour – paying back 13,000 after avoiding capital gains tax on a taxpayer-funded home and an eve-of-election resignation from Gordon Brown's Government which backfired badly – as well as her Commons tap dancing troupe, the Division Belles, I will always remember her succinctly expressed view of the education system.
She said: "My brother failed his 11-plus and now he drives a bus, and he's at least as bright as I am, if not brighter. When I was 18, there were two people in my class who went to university. There were two of us who passed the 11-plus from my primary school."
Blears femme escaped her humble origins because she passed the dreaded exam; Blears homme, however happy he may have been in his job, could not break out of working-class Lancashire life.
This is an astonishingly patronising point of view; Ms Blears's attitude takes my breath away. In her world, the path of her brother's life was all but fixed by the time he had completed primary education, whereas a whole vista of opportunities opened up for her because she got through the 11-plus.
As someone who failed the exam and who, based on the results of practice tests, was nowhere near making the grade, let me tell you that Ms Blears has got it wrong.
For many youngsters, there was nothing wrong with the old system of grammars and secondary moderns which gave academically and technically-inclined children an outstanding education.
But things have changed since the Blears siblings did their 11-plus. When I failed the exam, I was sent to a comprehensive and probably had a more rounded education than
Ms Blears did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And it's for that very reason – so much has changed – that it's wrong for Ms Blears to carry on repeating the dictum that 11-plus failure can blight your life.
Talk like hers does nothing to raise the aspirations of children who don't go to grammar schools yet, as someone who has spent her adult life in the Labour Party – which is still, just about, the party of opportunity – you would have expected her to do all she could to make people believe that progress is possible.
Should all the children who failed the 11-plus set aside their aspirations because of one exam?
Of course not, but that's the implied message that Ms Blears creates when talking about herself and her brother, even though, in a roundabout way, she is trying to speak out against inequality.
There is a wealth of opportunity for children who don't make it to grammars, and I am an example of this. I ended up at a quintessentially "bog-standard" comprehensive school before switching to a nearby grammar when I was 16. Yet if you believed Ms Blears's view then this would not have been possible; my 11-plus failure would have meant the path of my life was enshrined in stone.
Ed Balls, the privately-educated Education Secretary, seems to have a similar view. Admitting that he "doesn't like" selection, the Normanton MP said last year: "I've heard first-hand how some of the young people starting in these schools feel on day one that they have already failed."
This is an absurd thing to say. In five years at a comprehensive of 1,200 people I never heard anyone wailing about the fact they had failed the 11-plus. In fact, it was barely even mentioned. Does Mr Balls really think that children in their teens – going through some of the most emotionally turbulent years of their lives – while away their time debating selection?
If some children do feel like they have "already failed", then could it be because well-meaning Ministers perpetuate the message that some children have been dumped in a second-rate academic world.
Today, the options for secondary schools for children who have "failed" are manifold. They can pick from comprehensives, city academies, faith schools, foundation schools and technology colleges – the dizzying choice a legacy of the insatiable Blairite lust for innovation.
Neither Labour, nor the Conservatives – whose internal row over selection in 2007 precipitated the resignation of frontbencher Graham Brady and David Cameron's first real policy crisis – will build more grammar schools, which means that it's time politicians started talking up the vast majority of people who end up at comprehensives.
Both parties have tied themselves in knots over grammars in recent years, which may explain why they have now gone quiet on them. Amid much fanfare, Labour gave parents the right to vote on the future of a particular selective school in their area, but these ballots have been largely forgotten.
When parents voted on the future of Ripon Grammar School in North Yorkshire in 2000 – with the electorate made up of 3,000 parents whose children attended local primary and preparatory schools – the outcome was a thumping 67 per cent majority for those backing selection.
Pro-comprehensive campaigners in Birmingham and Sutton in London could not even muster enough signatures to trigger a ballot.
While there are those who will continue to wage war against grammars, there are countless more who will rally to their defence. With more schools sharing resources and expertise with their neighbours, the divisions between 11-plus successes and failures will continue to be eroded.
Hazel Blears invokes an image of several generations crushed by their 11-plus failure. While this may have been true for some people who grew up at the same time as Ms Blears – but certainly not all – it's wildly inaccurate today.
Her view of the world hinders the children she purports to help. She may have been nicknamed "Tony Blair's little ray of sunshine" but, for me, the verdict that Gordon Brown gave on her expenses is just as valid when it comes to her take on education: "totally unacceptable".
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