YP Letters: No return to dark age of segregation of children by 11-plus

IF you have been away all summer, you may have missed the reports that the Prime Minister has changed (a bit like the metamorphosis of Doctor Who) and the new one, Theresa May, is keen to bring back grammar schools, incidentally previously a Ukip policy.

Pupils at 11 will be selected through an examination, indeed the new Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, is looking at plans to make all academies and free schools selective.

After a 18 year ban on new grammars, trying to bring the idea back from the grave is already causing a political stench. There is a cross party backlash, the evidence shows it will increase inequality and have a negative impact on social mobility. What will happen to the 80 per cent of children who are told they are failures at age 11? The Sutton Trust suggests that only three per cent of students at grammars take free school meals compared with 20 per cent elsewhere.

This policy of segregation (which was and is morally repugnant) would be on the grounds of class, postcode and social environment and result in an increase of inequality and elitism, it would be a return to an educational dark ages.

After the Second World War, grammar schools were justified initially by the work of Cyril Burt. He used a group of twins to suggest that there are different types of mind, some that would benefit from a grammar education and some that would not. Since then several researchers, culminating in a 1984 BBC docu-drama The Intelligence Man, showed his work to be false, removing academic support for selection, although a few of his supporters have disagreed.

The thought of segregation of any type is a dark shadow from another century; the end of slavery, votes for women, the civil rights movement are battles that have been won; selection at 11 is not a battle we need to fight again. It is more of the needless structural change that this Government has inflicted on education instead of making real investment. This is reflected in the recent research sponsored by the Local Government Association showing that academies are no better than maintained (State) schools.

What happens in the nations at the top of educational success?

Finland has been shown to have the best educational outcomes in the world and they do not select their students at any age.