Mrs May’s pledge to re-introduce grammar schools where there is a local desire for them is not merely sensible: it is scriptural.
Let me declare my interest: I went to a Catholic grammar school. The majority of pupils were there having passed the 11-plus, but there were not enough bright Catholics to fill all the places (those who failed were normally sent to Cardinal Newman’s secondary modern in another part of the city). So the surplus places were offered to Protestant children on a fee-paying basis. Most of them had failed the 11-plus but were accepted on the basis of the school’s own entrance exam. I was one of the latter.
It took but five minutes to recognise that the 11-plus was a long way from infallible. Some of the brightest children in the fast stream had failed it and some of the strugglers in the third stream had passed it. Nor was it a question just of late development. Some of the failures excelled in Latin or maths from the outset.
That injustice, however, can be put right by a more flexible system of transfers. The core concept of giving the brightest children a highly academic education tailored to their abilities is sound and just.
Consider the Parable of the Talents. One man was gifted with five talents which he turned into another five, one with two which he used to make another two, but the chap with a single talent buried it in the ground and did nothing with it.
As a society we do nothing with a lot of talent, which lies buried in the ground of large urban council estates. A bright child from a deprived or chaotic background has a major escape route if his or her education is designed to stretch abilities to the limit. I saw it happen often enough in my own constituency which had both the 11-plus and grammar schools.
To be sure, the children of professional parents will be coached and encouraged, but instead of worrying about their “unfair” advantages we should worry about the unfair disadvantages of those who, able to profit from a rigorous education to the benefit of both self and others, instead sit in disrupted classes, breathing a lack of aspiration in the very air around them. There is nothing kind or Christian about that.
We think nothing of it if people who are exceptionally gifted in music, sport or the arts receive special coaching or scholarships to nurture their talent, but we have somehow been persuaded that it is different for academic children. It is not. There is not and never has been anything divisive about making sure that nobody’s talent is buried in the ground.
The master in Our Lord’s parable was pretty furious to find the gift he had given languishing in a hole. He punished the servant by taking it away. Today, however, it is the system itself which buries the talent, with often its owner being unaware of its presence. If it is then taken away it is all our loss.
The parable also makes the obvious point that although we are not all equally endowed it is what we do with what we have that matters. The Good Samaritan had done pretty well for himself for we know that he was travelling with a beast carrying oil, wine and bandages, and that he had money enough to pay the innkeeper and to take out credit with him.
Had he done less well, he would have been unable to help the man who fell among thieves. Similarly, every talent buried in the ground is an opportunity missed not just for the individual but for us all.
It is fatuous to argue that massing a large number of pupils with mixed abilities allows every talent to be catered for. That works well enough where there is home back-up and a catchment area which provides for shared aspiration between parents and schools. But, as the PM observed, that tends to result in selection by house price. Selection by merit is much fairer.
I am proud that one of the PM’s earliest announcements should be permission for new grammar schools to come into being. Then, of course, there is Brexit. Perhaps when we are no longer part of a big, interventionist, protectionist bloc, British talents will be able to flourish, having been finally dug up from the ground and put to use.
The success of our athletes in the Olympics is a tribute to the National Lottery as well as their own talents. They were given a chance to bring on sporting prowess. Why on earth should it be less moral to provide for tomorrow’s Nobel Prize winners?
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