IQ2 goes back to school

Lloyd Evans reports on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate

Intelligence Squared squared up to intelligence last Tuesday. How do we get the best from our brightest youngsters while not chucking the dimwits on to the educational scrapheap? Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, proposed the motion, ‘All schools, state as well as private, should be allowed to select their own pupils.’ With his wry, memorable turn of phrase, he derided the idea that selection equals segregation. ‘It’s a myth that the sharp-elbowed middle classes colonise the best schools while the working classes lose out.’ Teachers, he said, were sick and tired of Whitehall diktats. And those opposing selection represented ‘the best possible example of Old Labour’s rancour and bitterness’. He characterised the government’s policy as self-regarding envy. ‘If everybody can’t have excellence, then no one will.’

Opposing him, the former education secretary David Blunkett spoke with great charm and wit and insisted that ‘schools should meet the needs of the child, not the other way round’.