Sir Graham Brady is Chairman of the 1922 Committee and is MP for Altrincham and Sale West.
Conservatives have always championed parental choice and excellence in education. I first turned out to campaign for the Conservative Party when I was sixteen, precisely because Labour and the Liberals wanted to close my grammar school.
Arriving in the House of Commons in 1997, I found myself representing four state grammar schools – including my own old school. As a new backbencher determined to make the case for some of our best schools, I received a warm welcome from the Shadow team: a volunteer auxiliary, always happy to cover that flank.
In due course, my efforts were noted and I was asked to be Shadow Schools Minister. I continued to make the case for excellence in state education, whether in selective or non-selective schools.
I went on to be PPS to the Leader of HM Opposition and Shadow Europe Minister; again, any freelance work I did to adduce the evidence that selective areas perform better overall than non-selective ones was encouraged.
Then in May 2007 it all changed. Without discussion or warning, David Cameron started to flirt with abandoning our support for state grammar schools in an apparent effort to demonstrate modernisation. As well as hugging passing huskies and hoodies, some of our best schools would go under the bus! From that point forward we would adopt the same illogical policy as the previous Labour government.
Rather than abandon my schools – and the huge number of my constituents who moved to the area so that their children could benefit from them – I decided to correct the record.
This effort was helped by a written answer that I received (to a question tabled weeks before) confirming that every ethnic group in England (including white British) gets better academic results in selective local authority areas than in comprehensive ones. I resigned from the front bench so that I could continue to make the case.
When Theresa May became Prime Minister, she pledged to open more academically selective schools. But following the 2017 election, she was not in a position to act.
When Boris Johnson introduced an Education Bill, I was poised to table an amendment to scrap the Blair Government’s statutory ban on new grammar schools. The Prime Minister agreed that I would be supported by the Government.
Then, last September, Liz Truss entered Downing Street, and whilst she chose to withdraw the deeply flawed Education Bill, she was clear that she would introduce separate legislation to get rid of Labour’s anti-grammar school laws.
Now we are back at the drawing board. Can something be done in the last session of the parliament? Or are we (yet again) looking to a general election manifesto?
Whichever route we take, we should acknowledge the absurdity of the current situation. Twenty-five years after Labour introduced parental ballots to get rid of grammar schools, only one ballot has been held – and that simply confirmed the huge popularity of grammar schools with the public. Yet it remains against the law to open a new grammar school.
This is especially damaging in parts of the country that already have selective schools. In my own Borough of Trafford, the seven state grammar schools are very popular. But the flow of pupils from surrounding comprehensive areas reduces the places available for local children – and that is a serious bugbear.
The inability to build new grammar schools in areas of population growth creates further problems. The small number of grammar schools in London are chased by such a massive population that they have been forced to become very highly selective. They are a very different proposition to grammar schools like mine, which are selecting the most academic third or so of the population.
The only way to tackle the problem of changing demographics whilst staying within the current law is to jump through endless hoops to prove that a new school is just an ‘annexe’ of an existing one: the same catchment, the same teaching staff, the same admissions arrangements.
This approach was taken a few years back in Sevenoaks. But in order to satisfy demand for grammar places for girls and boys, it was necessary to build two new annexes: one is an offshoot of a girls’ school and the other of a boys’ school. A new co-ed grammar school would have been deemed to be a brand new grammar school – and therefore illegal!
You might imagine that this ludicrous policy was created to solve a problem. In fact, these restrictions apply to schools that achieve excellent outcomes and are popular wherever they exist. There are three things that should be done.
Firstly, independent schools choosing to convert to free schools should be allowed to retain existing selective admissions arrangements; at present, the law requires such schools to adopt comprehensive admissions when they stop charging fees.
Secondly, we should propose some pilot new selective schools in areas of low educational attainment; this would provide more opportunity in communities where too much talent is wasted.
Finally, we should scrap the 1998 ban on opening new grammar schools.
The last of these is the most pressing, because it would allow areas with selective education to stop the distortion inherent in the current rules and maintain the same balance of selective and non-selective places in an area as the local population grows.
If we really do believe in parental choice and diversity of educational provision, it is time to take this simple step to help achieve our goals.
Sir Graham Brady is Chairman of the 1922 Committee and is MP for Altrincham and Sale West.
Conservatives have always championed parental choice and excellence in education. I first turned out to campaign for the Conservative Party when I was sixteen, precisely because Labour and the Liberals wanted to close my grammar school.
Arriving in the House of Commons in 1997, I found myself representing four state grammar schools – including my own old school. As a new backbencher determined to make the case for some of our best schools, I received a warm welcome from the Shadow team: a volunteer auxiliary, always happy to cover that flank.
In due course, my efforts were noted and I was asked to be Shadow Schools Minister. I continued to make the case for excellence in state education, whether in selective or non-selective schools.
I went on to be PPS to the Leader of HM Opposition and Shadow Europe Minister; again, any freelance work I did to adduce the evidence that selective areas perform better overall than non-selective ones was encouraged.
Then in May 2007 it all changed. Without discussion or warning, David Cameron started to flirt with abandoning our support for state grammar schools in an apparent effort to demonstrate modernisation. As well as hugging passing huskies and hoodies, some of our best schools would go under the bus! From that point forward we would adopt the same illogical policy as the previous Labour government.
Rather than abandon my schools – and the huge number of my constituents who moved to the area so that their children could benefit from them – I decided to correct the record.
This effort was helped by a written answer that I received (to a question tabled weeks before) confirming that every ethnic group in England (including white British) gets better academic results in selective local authority areas than in comprehensive ones. I resigned from the front bench so that I could continue to make the case.
When Theresa May became Prime Minister, she pledged to open more academically selective schools. But following the 2017 election, she was not in a position to act.
When Boris Johnson introduced an Education Bill, I was poised to table an amendment to scrap the Blair Government’s statutory ban on new grammar schools. The Prime Minister agreed that I would be supported by the Government.
Then, last September, Liz Truss entered Downing Street, and whilst she chose to withdraw the deeply flawed Education Bill, she was clear that she would introduce separate legislation to get rid of Labour’s anti-grammar school laws.
Now we are back at the drawing board. Can something be done in the last session of the parliament? Or are we (yet again) looking to a general election manifesto?
Whichever route we take, we should acknowledge the absurdity of the current situation. Twenty-five years after Labour introduced parental ballots to get rid of grammar schools, only one ballot has been held – and that simply confirmed the huge popularity of grammar schools with the public. Yet it remains against the law to open a new grammar school.
This is especially damaging in parts of the country that already have selective schools. In my own Borough of Trafford, the seven state grammar schools are very popular. But the flow of pupils from surrounding comprehensive areas reduces the places available for local children – and that is a serious bugbear.
The inability to build new grammar schools in areas of population growth creates further problems. The small number of grammar schools in London are chased by such a massive population that they have been forced to become very highly selective. They are a very different proposition to grammar schools like mine, which are selecting the most academic third or so of the population.
The only way to tackle the problem of changing demographics whilst staying within the current law is to jump through endless hoops to prove that a new school is just an ‘annexe’ of an existing one: the same catchment, the same teaching staff, the same admissions arrangements.
This approach was taken a few years back in Sevenoaks. But in order to satisfy demand for grammar places for girls and boys, it was necessary to build two new annexes: one is an offshoot of a girls’ school and the other of a boys’ school. A new co-ed grammar school would have been deemed to be a brand new grammar school – and therefore illegal!
You might imagine that this ludicrous policy was created to solve a problem. In fact, these restrictions apply to schools that achieve excellent outcomes and are popular wherever they exist. There are three things that should be done.
Firstly, independent schools choosing to convert to free schools should be allowed to retain existing selective admissions arrangements; at present, the law requires such schools to adopt comprehensive admissions when they stop charging fees.
Secondly, we should propose some pilot new selective schools in areas of low educational attainment; this would provide more opportunity in communities where too much talent is wasted.
Finally, we should scrap the 1998 ban on opening new grammar schools.
The last of these is the most pressing, because it would allow areas with selective education to stop the distortion inherent in the current rules and maintain the same balance of selective and non-selective places in an area as the local population grows.
If we really do believe in parental choice and diversity of educational provision, it is time to take this simple step to help achieve our goals.