The QUEEN'S ENGLISH SOCIETY

Registered charity 272901

Right Honourable David Cameron MP
Leader of the Conservative Party
House of Commons
London SW1 1AA

Dear Mr. Cameron

Grammar Schools

The Queen's English Society (QES) is a registered charity. We aim to encourage good English in newspapers and broadcasting, and the successful teaching of English language and literature. We therefore have a legitimate interest in policies for grammar schools.

For the reasons explained in later paragraphs, we believe grammar schools are essential if the highest historic achievements in English are to be respected and matched by future generations. Furthermore, they will indirectly help standards of English in the great majority of children.

In sport, music, business, academic work, and other areas of human life, the best achievements greatly exceed the average level of attainment; and in all these areas there is a consensus that the best achievements are good for the nation. In all except the academic area, it seems generally agreed that specialised training is a good thing. The QES wishes to see the academic training of the grammar schools wholeheartedly supported, and expanded into those parts of the country where they are lacking.

In the 1950s about 20% of children were offered this training. If those children are dispersed among comprehensive schools, those schools have to be very large to support a viable academic stream. If those children are concentrated into grammar schools, the comprehensives can be run on a much smaller scale.

This will have have tremendous benefits for the ordinary majority of children. It takes exceptional management ability to run a large organisation rather than a mid-sized one, and that ability is seldom found. A mid-sized school can far more easily generate a successful ethos that children and parents will readily support, including a better level of attainment in English. The QES therefore advocates this approach.

Your education shadow minister rightly observed that there are pressures and influences of a non-academic kind which attempt to distort the recruitment into grammar schools. The QES suggests these non-academic concerns would fade away if a revised, smaller, and more successful model of comprehensive (perhaps renamed as general) schools were to become normal for 60% to 70% of children. There is anecdotal evidence of successful comprehensive schools although few ordinary people see them; the QES wants such success to become a familiar sight.

It has been suggested ( Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 24th May 2007) that a bottom stream of children should be removed from the comprehensives and educated in schools as specialised as, but different from, grammar schools. The QES would support this proposal as benefiting all the children and schools involved.

It is often argued that it was not right to categorise children as academic or other at the age of 11. The QES makes two points in reply: firstly that the great majority of children were indeed correctly assessed at that time; and secondly, that with the proliferation of examinations in modern schools it should be easy to re-assess borderline cases at 13 and at GCSE time, in a way that was not done in the past.

It is erroneous to say grammar schools are no use today because they represent the 1950s. A valid solution remains valid unless vitiated by external changes. Children (and adults) have not undergone any deep-rooted change since then.

The QES hopes the Conservative Party will take account of these observations in formulating its policies.