Labour's election fixers stack odds for grammar schools
Blunkett's obstacle course for comprehensive campaigners
Richard Hatcher, Birmingham CASE
IN RIPON, a market town in Yorkshire, parents are campaigning to turn the local grammar school into a comprehensive. It sounds like a news story from the 1960s. But for those parts of the country where the 164 remaining grammar schools exist, it is a battle still to be won.
For example, here in Birmingham we have 8 grammar schools which grossly distort the pattern of education at the expense of working class children. 38% of pupils in Birmingham secondary schools are entitled to free school meals. In the grammar schools the figure is less than 5%. Children from some minority ethnic backgrounds - African-Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi - are heavily under-represented.
The existence of the grammar schools deprives the would-be comprehensive schools of a significant number of the most academically able children. Recent research confirms that the standards achieved by less able children who go to true comprehensive schools are higher than those who go to comprehensive schools 'creamed' by grammar schools.
Meanwhile, the most able pupils do just as well in comprehensives as in grammars. In other words, the existence of the grammar schools actually holds down the standards of other schools.
So perhaps the most elementary step one might have expected of a Labour government with a massive majority is that it would complete the long-overdue comprehensive reform. If Margaret Thatcher in the 1960s could get rid of most of the grammar schools, surely David Blunkett could finish the job.
'Watch my lips, selection will end' he said at the Labour Party conference just before the general election. But the Blair government didn't legislate the eleven-plus away. Instead it allowed parents to ballot locally.
That doesn't sound too bad, you may say. But the rules have been designed by the same method which ensured Dobson's victory over Livingstone.
Before a ballot can take place, 20% of parents have to sign a petition calling for it. In Ripon the local campaign has got the signatures and voting is now taking place. But in Birmingham, where there are 8 grammar schools, it means collecting 10,728 signatures - a mammoth task. In Kent, with 39 grammar schools, the figure is even higher.
COMPARE this with the proposed ballot for changing to an elected mayor. Birmingham and other big cities will be ordered to hold a referendum later this year. No messing about with petitions to trigger a ballot.
For smaller councils, petitions will be needed, but the government has just lowered the threshold from 5% of the electorate to a much smaller figure, to be decided by John Prescott, because they were worried that not enough people would sign it.
But at least everyone has the chance to vote, you may say. Wrong again. The rules are byzantine. Two sets of procedures are in force in different areas. Under one, the only parents who can vote are those whose children go to primary schools which have sent five or more pupils to grammar schools in the past three years.
This excludes parents at the majority of primary schools in the city (only 127 out of 334 are eligible), as well as all those of secondary school students - but includes parents at private prep schools.
Still, at least local Labour councils can throw their weight behind the campaign can't they?
Well, no. They are strictly forbidden by law from taking a partisan position. You thought that's precisely why we elected them? Ah, that's Old Labour, this is local democracy Millbank-style.
The task is huge, but there are vigorous local campaigns in a number of areas, Ripon, Birmingham and Kent among them. They need help.
The national umbrella organisation is CASE, the Campaign for State Education, 158 Durham Rd London SW20 0DG. Website: http://www.mandolin.demon.co.uk/case.html