The mythical even playing field

My opinions about grammar schools will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me. However, I am willing to engage in informed debate on this issue from many different perspectives, except one.

The philosophical and pedagogical assumption that it is a ‘good idea’ to select children at the age of 11 may have been one that Piaget himself would agree with. Much has been written about grammar schools being ‘good schools’; they ‘push’ the gifted and talented to achieve, or some such logic. Although, I’m not quite sure what the gifted and talented student is supposed to do if they have not been ‘pushed’ at their primary school or by an eager  parent and cannot pass a test.

Of course, as an EP, I can understand that these are ‘intelligence tests’ searching for the mythical ‘g’. However, as an EP, I cannot quite get my head around the concept of intelligence being fully formed at the age of 11, especially given what we know about the massive proliferation of brain development in later teenage life. And, as an EP, I am of course fully aware of the limitations of such tests. Never mind, testing is what we do in education and for many it continues into our professional lives so let’s just get on with it.

As a discursive and narrative psychologist, I find the messages that are received by those that fail the test somewhat irksome, as they are expected to carry on in education in the knowledge that they are ‘secondary’. I was under the impression that we were all aware of self-fulfilling prophecies after the era of 1960s psychology but maybe I should go back to my textbooks. There is of course also the potential impact on these ‘secondary’ secondary schools of being ‘secondary’, and the possibility of ‘sink schools’. The negative impact of selection within a community does not sit well with me ontologically, however, I do know that some comps and grammars work well together (in a similar manner to a Downtown Abbey servant appreciating the scraps that they have been fed).

As a local authority employee who has felt fairly aggrieved by the previous regime’s aggressive pursuit of the academy system; this grammar ban lift is wearisome. The whole academy thing has been a bit of a mess. In some places highly successful, in others extremely dodgy. But a lot of people have worked very hard to support the academy system, even when it has tried to avoid surveillance, so now to be thrown a ball from the far right field will likely elevate everyone’s cortisol levels.

There is also the social mobility argument. Grammar schools are not bastions of social mobility. We know they are not. They are bastions perpetuating inequality.

All of these are lively debates which I am happy to be engaging with over the coming weeks. However, one argument that I will not be engaging in from the other side is that because grammar schools promote inequality the implication is that our current system does not do so. We have a system with a gender skew in certain diagnoses, representations from different ethnic minorities with different SEND labels, appalling outcomes for kids in care, access to services by postcode, over representations of certain ethnicities and certain social economic backgrounds in youth offending institutions, secretive ‘managed move’ processes, reports going home to parents with no budget to translate them into their home language, inappropriate uses of cognitive assessments and parents and children not invited to consultations about their own lives.

In conclusion, no thank you to grammar schools, yes please to education and social reform.