Are grammar schools unfair?

Those dread words ‘Grammar schools’ are back in the news again. The education secretary, Damian Hinds, has today announced a new fund that will allow established academically selective schools, i.e. the 163 grammars clustered around the country, to found new ‘satellite’ schools. The proposal could increase pupil numbers at grammar schools by 16,000 over the next four years. The news has been met with the typical mixture of surprise and outrage; amidst the tried-and-tested to-and-fro, it is hard to find much reasoned and sustained argument. Everyone, it seems, knows where they – and everyone else – stand. But, dig a little deeper into the issues at stake, and Hinds is found to be asking the nation the two difficult questions it needs to answer. First, should the same educational opportunities be equally available to pupils around the country? Second, and more crucially, should school teaching be academically selective, whether between schools or between classrooms? If yes, what principles of selection should the state support? If not, how best to prepare pupils for those careers (and universities) that will make selections on an academic basis?

After the debacle of last year’s election, Theresa May felt obliged to abandon her controversial commitment to increase the number of grammar schools – just one of many sore points in the Manifesto That Not Many Fessed To.