Poor Kids Do Better In Selective Schools

Back when the Brits declared war on their selective secondary school system Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that the objective of the new comprehensive schools was "grammar schools for all," as Eric Anderson reports.

Back in the 1960s, you see, it was an article of faith in left-wing circles that the “11-plus” exam, which controlled access to selective secondary schools, was an abomination that preserved the class system. Abolish the 11-plus, they claimed, and you would end centuries of privilege.

It hasn’t turned out that way. Now that Britain has a uniform system of comprehensive secondary schools, the number of poor kids making it into university has gone down.

The old selective system allowed bright young children from deprived homes to vault into another world, a world in which academic study was as natural as taking a shower every day. Instead of the envious cultural bias against academic studies that prevails in lower-class culture, they now lived in a world that celebrated learning and scholarship. In the comprehensive school system, there is no escape from the lower-class culture.

There has been, inadvertently, a test of the new comprehensive school system. By an accident of fate the schools of Northern Ireland were not converted to the comprehensive system. To this day the Northern Irish have preserved the old system of selective grammar schools. The result, writes Anderson:

Northern Ireland... provides the model for what a selective system can achieve for social mobility. There, 42 per cent of university entrants come from less privileged backgrounds, compared to only 28 per cent in England.

Here in the United States, school reform comes under the rubric of “choice.” Let parents send their children to the school of their choice; that is the cry.

But it is amazing how people, even here, seem to accept almost without comment the idea that the government ought to be able to control the education of children.

Actually, most of us have no problem with the government controlling the education of other-peoples’ children.

We only draw the line when the government decides what is best for our own children.