WEEKEND COLUMNISTS  |
| The library of Aylesbury Grammar School |
Ah, Bucks! Leafiest and maybe loveliest of the Home Counties.
It was here, at Stoke Poges in 1750, that Thomas Gray wrote his “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”, the very apogee of the iambic pentameter: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ... Ti-tum, ti-tum, ti-tum, ti-tum, ti-tum.
That is just the sort of poem that used to be drilled into children by Britain’s grammar schools as part of an old-fashioned, rigorous education. In the 1960s and 1970s, the vast majority of grammar schools – hundreds of them – were abolished in what was either an act of egalitarianism or vandalism, depending on your standpoint. The wounds of that battle have never healed. Schools are always on the front line of British political war, at the mercy of changing educational fashion and governmental whim. There will be yet more upheavals if the Conservatives regain power next year.
But on this one bloody battleground, the fighting has finally subsided. Over most of England, the grammar schools have gone forever. But 164 remain, in pockets, almost a fifth of them in Kent. Only one local education authority, resisted totally: Buckinghamshire, almost miraculously, retained its old network intact.
Many young families, wearying of London, migrate out here to find a little touch of the 1950s: small, safe towns amid nice countryside. They also find vile traffic and sky-high property prices, but there you go. And, for better or worse, Buckinghamshire’s now unique schools system. The 13 grammar schools offer one-third of the county’s children superb opportunities in schools ranked among the best in the country. The problem is what happens to the other two-thirds.
The postwar educational system was determined by an act of 1944, piloted by the Conservative minister “Rab” Butler, which raised the school-leaving age to 15 and offered every child a free secondary education in one of three types of schools: the grammars, which had long catered for the academic minority, technical schools, offering a more practical curriculum, and new “secondary moderns” for the rest.
Unfortunately, hardly any technical schools were built and the secondary moderns soon acquired an appalling reputation as dumping grounds for those who failed the selection process, based on the “11-plus” exam. The set-up was soon discredited. When Labour achieved power in 1964, it began abolishing the grammars and building vast new comprehensive schools to cater for every child over 11. This process continued through the next 15 years, even during the interlude of Conservative rule from 1970 to 1974. The education secretary of that time was said to have approved more grammar school closures than anyone else. Her name was Margaret Thatcher.
But when Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, there was, in effect, a truce. Despite widespread sentiment among Conservative supporters that the loss of the grammars had been a disaster, there was no attempt to reverse what had already happened. Buckinghamshire’s council – perpetually Tory-controlled – had prevaricated long enough to find safety, and could stay as it was.
Lucky Bucks, in some ways. Abolition was indeed a disaster. Many grammar schools were centuries old, with a strong ethos. They were replaced by soulless new institutions that inspired no sense of belonging. The education historian David Crook, of the University of London, was a pupil at what had been Northampton Grammar School, just north of Buckinghamshire, in the 1970s, soon after it had mutated into a comprehensive. He remembers the sports fields going to seed for lack of attention and cash, and the disaffection – nervous breakdowns even – of long-established teachers used to dealing only with the clever children: “They had had no training or preparation at all to get ready for the kind of pupil they had only read about.”
There is also an argument that the change failed even from an egalitarian standpoint. The old 11-plus provided a route to success based on merit. The comprehensives began to be stratified on class and racial lines, with middle-class parents scrambling to buy homes in the catchment areas of “good schools”. The public (ie private) schools which, in Labour party dreams, would wither away, enjoyed a revival instead. The loss of the grammar schools has been blamed for everything from the eclipse of Welsh rugby to the decline in manners. With some justification.
Right now across the country the rising-11s – nearly all of whom will go to their local comprehensives – are taking their SATs, the tests that provide the raw data for the league tables on which primary schools are judged. In one county, these are even more meaningless than elsewhere. For Buckinghamshire kids, the big moment came in October, when many were only just 10. That’s 11-plus time. It does not assess academic achievement; it is “a verbal reasoning test” with 80 multiple-choice questions in 50 minutes (see panel on page 19 for sample questions). Candidates get two attempts a week apart, and the better score stands.
This is not dissimilar to what most people in Britain now aged between about 50 and 75 had to endure. They produced children who have become the pushy parents of today. And in Buckinghamshire, that pushiness becomes far more urgent. Marion Clayton, the councillor in charge of the schools system, insists that the test is fair. “It is designed carefully and will select the right children,” she says. “It’s not an academic test, it’s a test of potential.” However, it’s is very hard to find a non-official who believes this.
Julie Coë from High Wycombe has two boys who did get into grammar schools. “You need to have strategies,” she says. “It’s a test of speed and it’s a test of technique. With two minutes before the bell goes, you have to guess. Kids who’ve been coached know this.”
Though all the primary schools in the county offer the odd practice session, a substantial tutorial industry has grown up specialising in getting kids through. “The coaches used to say, ‘Give me a year with the kids.’ They now say, ‘Give me two,’” says Niknam Hussain, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman on the council and a passionate critic of the system.
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| The Grammar School holds firm to blazers, badges, crests and ties |
Even Stephen Lehec, the head of Aylesbury Grammar School which takes in winners, has his doubts: “The 11-plus needs to adhere more to testing innate intelligence,” he says. Similar criticisms applied to the old 11-plus. As one education expert put it: “We didn’t have any British engineers from that generation because children who operated in a non-verbal way weren’t selected.” (The Buckinghamshire questions look to me designed to highlight future Scrabble and crossword champions.)
And once the results are out, the rematch begins. “Every November I have parents literally crying in my sitting room,” says Hussain. There is an appeals system, which obviously favours the clued-up middle-class. There is also the chance of a 12-plus or even a 13- or 14-plus, but the gateway gets ever narrower.
Buckinghamshire offers two concessions to political correctness. When I talk of a child failing, Marion Clayton interrupts sternly: “We don’t use the terms pass or fail. We talk of a child qualifying or not.” And the schools for the non-qualifiers are called “upper schools” not “secondary moderns”. Despite being deprived of the top third of the cohort, some of these schools get good, even excellent, results, and on some measures do better than comprehensives elsewhere. But this is a useless statistic unless you can accurately compare the demographics. And the consequences of failure – sorry, non-qualification – can be extreme.
Three separate upper school heads told me they spent the first year repairing the battered self-esteem of the 11- and 12-year-olds. “Failing the 11-plus is a catastrophe in their young lives. The school has to work very hard to turn that around,” said one.
“That’s ridiculous,” responds Nick Seaton of the National Grammar Schools Association. “We all take exams and fail. If you go for a job and there are 20 applicants and you don’t get it, you haven’t failed. You just haven’t got the job.”
But then you can apply for another job. That doesn’t apply to an 11-year-old from Buckinghamshire unless the parents are rich enough (which many are) to whisk them off to public schools – which in other counties they would probably do anyway. Others don’t have that choice. “There’s no middle ground,” says Hussain. “It’s a cliff-face. There’s an officer class and a grunt class.”
Less than a mile away from County Hall in Aylesbury, it is possible to see this in action. Three schools nestle next to each other: Aylesbury Grammar School (for qualifying boys), Aylesbury High School (for qualifying girls) and The Grange Upper School (for everyone else). There are obviously some connections between the first two: you can spot the courting couples at lunchtime. But The Grange is a different world. Even the head, Vince Murray, seemed a little wistful when I said I had just been shown round the Grammar School, a tour he had never taken. There are discussions these days about collaboration over new qualifications; there are occasional sports fixtures. But the connections are tenuous, and even the strongest links get frayed: best friends from primary school get separated; even siblings can be parted.
Murray might be relieved if he did look round; the Grammar School is also state-funded and looks it – this isn’t Eton. But it dates back to 1598 and its traditions suffuse its buildings. Even the old canes are in a glass display case. And its head, Stephen Lehec, is an impressive figure: just 38, new to the job, but obviously in charge. He is a moderniser, as proud of the food technology course as of the classics and cricket. Yet the old ways still rule: “Do up your top button, please,” he tells a passing boy, who hurriedly complies; the boys stand up when a teacher enters; there is the whole panoply of houses, colours and cups. Ninety per cent of the top year normally go on to university, 10 per cent of them to Oxbridge.
Lehec says he has pupils whose fathers he thinks are millionaires, and others so deprived they are on the child protection register. Only a grammar school could encompass such a social range. And, in their black blazers and striped ties, no one could tell which boy might be which. “We don’t have any rules. The school runs on common sense.” he said.
“But you do! What about top buttons?”
“I would call those expectations.”
“Expectations would be harder to enforce in a comprehensive school?”
“Arguably,” he replied, in an assenting tone of voice.
Over at The Grange, the uniform is sweatshirts or polo shirts, and rules speak louder than expectations. They have to. Before Murray arrived, the school was officially declared to have “serious weaknesses”, and he seems to have pulled it round. He has two separate problem groups: the kids who don’t want to be here, because they don’t want to be in any school, and those who don’t want to be here, because they wanted to go to grammar school.
“Everything we do here is based on trying to influence the children that whatever they want to do, they can do,” says Murray. “There is a sixth form of 150, and 60 per cent made it to university last year. One girl got an Oxbridge interview. She didn’t make it, but getting that far was a first.”
When one contemplates Buckinghamshire, it is necessary to return to its masterpiece, Gray’s “Elegy”:
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
If only they had had the opportunity. One can argue that the entire British education system fails to maximise the talents of the population. “In my view it’s quite wrong to say comprehensive education has failed,” says David Crook. “It was never properly tried because there was never any will at central level to resource it properly.”
Almost certainly, Buckinghamshire will never now go comprehensive, because the grammar schools can claim foundation status and opt out if they feel threatened. For future generations in Stoke Poges, there will be a greater chance of maximising that talent than elsewhere – provided they get through one whimsical exam when aged 10. And less chance if they don’t.
matthew.engel@ft.com
Matthew Engel’s dispatch appears fortnightly.
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Pencils at the ready...
1. In the following sentence, a word of four letters is hidden at the end of one word and the beginning of the next word. Find the pair of words that contains the hidden word.
They saw that all the cake was gone.
2. Find the two words, one from each group, that will complete the sentence in the best way.
Assist is to (help stock block) as hinder is to (falter fail delay)
3. Find two words, one from each group, that are closest in meaning.
(game trick harm) (play hurt chess)
4. In this question, three of the five words are related in some way. Find the two words that do not go with these three:
ship train canal tarmac bus
5. In the following sentence, the word in capitals has had three letters next to each other taken out. These three letters will make one correctly spelt word without changing their order. The sentence that you make must make sense.
They were asked to AD their mistakes.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
6. The alphabet is here to help you with these questions. Find the next letters in the series and mark the correct answer on the answer sheet.
EA AC JF FH OK
7. In this question, the three words in the second group should go together in the same way as the three in the first group. Find the word that is missing in the second group and mark it on the answer sheet.
(spit [tip] past) (sham [ ? ] tend)
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
8. The alphabet is here to help you with this question. Find the letters that will complete the sentence in the best way and mark the correct answer on the answer sheet.
CX is to DW as HS is to (?)
Sample 11-plus practice questions.
Copyright GL Assessment.
Answers: 1. tall; 2. help, delay; 3. harm, hurt; 4. canal, tarmac; 5. Amend; 6. KM; 7. Mat; 8. IR
