The conspiracy against grammar schools

I love a good hard debate, especially at a university. I can’t recall how many such clashes I have had, on God, free speech, marijuana, and Russia. But on the subject I really want to talk about, the destruction of the grammar schools, I find it harder and harder to get anyone to debate against me. Your guess is as good as mine about why the comprehensive school enthusiasts won’t argue with me anymore (they used to). It is certainly not that nobody cares about this ancient controversy. They do. A few years ago one university society tried for months to find me an opponent, and couldn’t – yet hundreds still turned up to the one-sided meeting we eventually decided to hold.

That university – York – was the one I attended myself in the early 1970s, when the dissolution of academically selective state schools had begun but was far from complete.