The golden age of the grammar schools

Some lucky parents have already solved their school and university problems. They have managed to insert their young into state grammar schools. If all goes according to plan, they will need to pay no gigantic fees, their sons and daughters will be educated to what at least looks like a high standard, in orderly classrooms — and an increasingly anti-middle-class Oxbridge will not be prejudiced against them when they apply. I envy them, having myself spent the GDP of a small Latin American country on private education over the past three decades, with variable results. But I also increasingly wish it were not so.

The anachronistic existence of a tiny rump of surviving academically selective state secondary schools, mostly in well-off areas in commuter range of big cities, seems to squash the argument for restoring such schools to the whole country. These places are beyond doubt indefensible fortresses of privilege. This is not their fault, or the fault of parents, teachers or heads.