A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System

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Despite its shortcomings, Hitchens’ book reminds us that inequalities are found in other forms of education too. Are we going to stop well-educated people from passing on their combined cultural and social capital to their children? Are we going to prevent wealthy people from moving to certain areas so we can better manage the catchment areas for schools?

The book’s focus on the harms suffered by talented working class pupils in the comprehensive system mean it has been warmly received by conservative pundits, who now offer a reactionary fusion of traditional merit-based conservatism and the identity politics of the white working class. However, Hitchens omits any mention of heredity, makes basic statistical and evidentiary errors, and ultimately fails to make a compelling case that social mobility has declined as a consequence of the comprehensive system. Access to more rigorous schooling now relies on one’s postcode or wealth, which are innately connected, far more than it did when we still needed ration books. Recently, I've been invigilating in secondary schools, and was surprised to see how little content the GCSE O' and A' Level papers contain nowadays, even compared to when I was teaching 37 years ago, so I have to agree with Peter Hitchens, much against my hopes when I started reading this book, that there is little chance of Grammar Schools returning, in the form they used to exist, largely, but not only, because teachers of today have not been given the chance to obtain the necessary education themselves.

Heads may swim at the detail in this book and the seemingly endless categories and sub-categories of schools and examinations, the maze of educational pathways and the bewildering succession of government reports. In his clear desire to be, in the best sense of the word, comprehensive, Hitchens has assembled an arsenal of information and unleashes a relentless fusillade of facts and figures that can be overwhelming at times. There is some repetition – Shirley Williams’s hypocrisy in sending her daughter to a grammar school despite a political life of implacable anti-grammar activism gets several mentions. However, Hitchens argues that the existing state school system is also riddled with inequalities. He cites a Sutton Trust report which found that “more than 85 per cent of the highest-performing state schools take in fewer disadvantaged pupils than they should for their catchment area”. Some successful comprehensive schools are located in areas with high house prices, so they tend to recruit more children from affluent families. He also mentions a study from Teach First, which found that 43 per cent of students at England’s outstanding state secondary schools come from the wealthiest 20 per cent of families. Poorer pupils, Hitchens notes, “are half as likely as the richest to be heading into an outstanding secondary school”. Many affluent families who send their children to comprehensive schools try to give them an advantage in other ways, for example, by paying for clubs and extracurricular activities.

Grammar schools did not forge a classless utopia because they were never intended to, nor would any schooling system be capable of doing so, as the comprehensive dogma continues to demonstrate. However, they clearly offered able students in difficult circumstances the opportunity to encounter rigorous academics . B y the mid-1960s grammars and direct grant schools were beating private schools in the battle for admissions to most elite universities. There is much further data to support the idea that grammar schools and independent education have little to no effect on examination performance, and that the disparities between pupils at each type of school are nearly entirely due to differences between the ability of the pupils who attend them. A 2018 study found that ‘exam differences between school types are primarily due to the heritable characteristics involved in pupil admission’. A 2020 study showed that expansions in free education in the UK did not raise wealth or income among their beneficiaries, which suggests that the positive relationship we observe between education and socio-economic outcomes within birth cohorts is due to signalling rather than skill acquisition, as Bryan Caplan has argued in The Case Against Education . And in The Son Also Rises , economic historian Gregory Clark argues that social mobility did not rise as a consequence of the same expansions in schooling (or many other social changes, such as mass literacy).Rather embarrassingly, Hitchens references a 1983 report that showed these intended “paradises of self-expression” still managing to academically outperform their comprehensive successors. This should put to bed the fear-mongering swathes of the comprehensive faithful still deploy about the SecMods in an attempt to dismiss the merits of selections. Next week, HEPI will be running a second review of the same book by a grammar school teacher that takes a different perspective on the arguments. Hitchens argues that as well as condemning numberless gifted young people from poor families to languish in mediocrity in sink schools, the project hasn’t even achieved its aim of a fairer society. Quite the reverse: selection by ability has been replaced by selection by wealth, the better comprehensives being able to draw from the most expensive catchment areas. Moreover, in the desperate attempt to shore up belief in the comprehensive project, the process of making exams easier was initiated, a process which continues to this day to the point where large numbers of university entrants need remedial classes in basic literacy and numeracy.

Grammar schools could more easily create a truly educated upper-crust of society than is currently possible with comprehensives. But the cultural transmission of our literature and history would require a national progressive government which is interested in using grammar schools as a nation building tool. Under a hostile government an academic grammar school could just as easily be used to inculcate Wokeness. Of course, selection across all age groups never ended at all. It has simply evolved into a more sinister species. Wealth is the “serpent” that corrupts the educational Eden , and the rich will always find a way to educate their own.But Hitchens also hints at the greater purposes of education - cultural transmission and the pursuit of academic excellence - as ends in themselves. He is on stronger footing when arguing these goals can be better achieved by segregating kids by ability. How can one be taught the English canon when slower children take weeks to grapple with Shakespearean English, or be trained to compare theories of history when ignorant pupils need to be taught the basic facts of the Tudor Dynasty and the Second World War over and over again? Academic selection is a necessary tool to correct the market failure of independent schools. Parents spend large sums of money to send their children to independent schools in the belief that they will improve their children’s grades, university destinations and lifetime earnings. As shown above, such beliefs are irrational. The reason independent schools outperform their state counterparts is because the children who attend such schools are more talented, and will do just as well in a state school. Fee-paying schools had faced a direct threat from grammar schools after the Second World War. According to Wooldridge, the proportion of children attending fee-paying schools in England and Wales declined from 6.7 per cent in 1955 to 4.5 per cent in 1978. The public-school share of Oxbridge places fell from 55 per cent in 1959 to 38 per cent in 1967. In his memoir John Carey argued that “the grammar schools, had they survived, would by now have all but eliminated the public school contingent in Oxford and Cambridge, with far-reaching effects on our society”. The arguments made by this book, and by others in the right-wing press, serve as an alibi for cash-strapped middle-class parents who want a better education for their children. I argue they should wear their prejudices openly, and demand the reintroduction of grammar schools for their own self-interest.

Hitchens points to the declining share of Oxbridge entrants from independent schools after the introduction of the tripartite system: 62% percent before the Education Act 1944, falling to 45% on the eve of comprehensivisation in the mid-1960s. The representation of state (nearly entirely grammar) schools more than doubled in this period, from 19% to 34% (pp. 89-91), with the remaining places were filled by overseas students and students from direct grant schools. This creates a more meritocratic society where professional, educational and economic success more closely correlate with real ability, rather than inherited privilege. This is not just more fair, but also benefits society as a whole, as the economic potential of the country is maximised. Hitchens admits that it is impossible to know exactly how Britain would function today if the grammars had survived. We can be almost certain that the potential of countless working and lower-middle-class children is being scuppered by the failed comprehensive experiment that leaves a third of Brits functionally illiterate. He lists a working class hero who supported grammar schools (Eric James) and public school villains who closed them down (Anthony Crossland, John Vaizey, Brian Simon). For Hitchens, this is evidence grammar schools are in the material self-interest of the working class. I’m sceptical that support for academic selection splits along class lines as strongly as Hitchens does. The polling suggests that class does not correlate with support for grammar schools, 3 and Hitchens describes a Rugby educated Fabian, R.H. Tawney, as having ‘dealt beautifully and movingly’ with academic selection (p. 30) and Robert Pidley, son of a bus driver stonemason, as a ‘utopian comprehensive campaigner’ (p. 30) who provided ‘what many comprehensive supporters have seen as the clearest statement of their desire and belief’ (p. 31). But however familiar Hitchens’ cultural conservatism is with the Book of Common Prayer, Clive of India, or the poetry of Housman , he’s not equipped for policy debates which require an understanding of social science. He doesn’t mention the terms ‘selection effect’ or ‘heritability’ once in the book, nor does he employ the same concepts implicitly. He didn’t grow up viewing /pol/ infographics, reading Lynn or Murray, or watching ‘race realism’ lectures on YouTube. To Hitchens, 1360 is just the beginning of the first peace of the Hundred Years’ War.

Nonetheless, I would, without doubt, support any return to selection by ability, rather than income, at the drop of a hat, in the unlikely event the electorate were to be given the chance to choose, by the current crop of political elites, who, ostensibly, stand on either side of the imaginary divide between the two main parties.