Of course, you’re right about the majority of Tory MPs’ views on selective education. I think Cameron is slaying dragons (as one wag said, ‘Slaying dragons? I’m dead against that’). What was the liklihood of the party proposing moves twoards greater selection anyway? Was it going to come out of the policy review?

UKIP - no. Far too many right policies there for me - and besides there are still plenty in the Conservative Party in favour of selective education.

If that chap had a blog in which those comments were published then I might be sad enough to go out looking for an argument and tell him off.

Also, exams? Mature student?

i was intending to make an argument against selective education, but now i see i can save myself the time by simply directing you towards david willetts and david cameron’s comments on the matter! since you say you’re a Tory because of the party’s attachment to selective education, how do you feel now? (i hear that UKIP is sticking to a selective education policy if you feel the need to jump ship)

on another point, regarding the Tory and Labour front bench support fot the Bill exempting Parliament from Freedom of Information legislation, i called it a disgrace before, and you said i used a ‘pathetic stigma word’. i saw that a Tory peer called it ’scandalous’ recently - will you be writing to him/her to advise them against using similarly pathetic and stigmatising words?

Should you wish to register your opposition to this pretty poor behaviour by the two ‘big’ parties, you can do so here: www.ourcampaign.org.uk/foi

i hope that, regardless of tribal party loyalties, we can all agree that Parliament should be transparent in its workings.

In terms of more vocational qualifications I agree that people shouldn’t necessarily be forced in to that kind of education at 11 and that was not what I was suggesting. I would advocate a system that starts to encourage people towards vocational subjects if they are less academically able from the age of 14. I don’t think people should necessarily be forced into doing vocational training - particularly not before the age of 16. I believe that there should be a basic all round education taught to all children - people will always need maths, english and basic knowledge in science regardless of what job you take in life. However - the UK needs plumbers, carpenters, electricians etc and with more youth unemplyment and more people leaving schools without any useful skills it would be better to make those who are going to leave school without those skills - the less academically able - to train in other areas.

The idea of choice is an intruiging one - although I do agree there should be a level of preference involved but there also has to be practicality. I may well want to become an olympic athlete, rock star etc but if I haven’t the natural talent there then it would be a pointless exercise. I realise that not every child is reaching their potential at 11 but then there was always a degree of interchangability between grammar schools and comps for those children who feel like they are being held back at the comps. It may be worth considering having a comprehensive education up until the age of 14 and allowing selection to occur from that age - those who haven’t academicallh blossomed by that point aren’t likely to in the following two years.

Selection is the only way to drive standards up for all and to ensure that the jobs market is receiving people with applicable skills of whatever kind - whether they be vocational or academic.

I’m not saying that everyone should study classics and physics or whatever. I just don’t think you can separate kids at 11 and essentially judge what their life choices are going to be for ever more. I worry that you infer that kids aged 11 who don’t pass the 11+ should, basically, do woodwork and the like, supplemented by maths and english (presumably so they can calculate the call-out charge and write you an invoice when they come round to do your plumbing?). Dividing kids for basically all of their school life on the basis of one single exam at 11 is an awful way to educate them. Yes, some are suited to more vocational subjects, some are suited to more academic ones. But do you really think they know for certain what they prefer at 11? I certainly didn’t, and am grateful that my school taught a range of subjects so that I could see what suited me over time.

You’re a conservative, so you must believe in individual choice - for the parent and the student. So why not let them make a choice about what’s best for a particular student? Why not let them choose a school that specialises in languages, or music, or technical subjects? Why instead force them to take an exam the result of which will send them to either an academic or vocational education? The 11+ takes away choice from the individual and places it in the school’s hands - surely that’s the wrong way round?

Interestingly, I had dinner with some teachers last night and asked them about this. One has colleagues who worked in Kent, where they still have selection at 11 and grammar schools. He said that that his colleagues left Kent because it was such a divided system, and that the effect of selection at 11 was exactly what you’d expect - good schools for some, and and bad education for the rest.

It may come as a shock to you but not everyone is as suited to such a rigourous academic education as you or I - something the government has finally come to realise - the option of a more vocational post 16 education becoming part of the raising of the school leaving age to 18. I think that it would be a lot fairer, to the taxpayer as well as the people being educated, if there was a selective education system that ensured that those who aren’t as academically able are allowed to pursue another more vocational education. That way taxpayer money isn’t wasted on unemployment benefits nor on trying to enforce an all-embracing academic education on them. (Something the majority of western nations have come to accept, America excluded - even they however have vocational options in their syllabus.) I’m not saying that everyone who goes to a comp rather than a grammar school has to take more vocational subjects but it should be encouraged - indeed it should still be ensured that youths leave school with basic maths and literacy skills - but it is only through that means of education that we get value for money out of the state education system.

I also feel that grammar schools would be of huge benefit to poor and deprived areas - it allows those who are less well off and who want to study the opportunity to do so, leaving those who don’t want to in the other schools. I know that doesn’t sound fair, almost creating a school of academic no-hopers, but to force those kids that do want to learn in to a school with those who don’t want to learn isn’t fair either. People need to overcome the idea of producing an ultra-fair education system as it just doesn’t work - common sense and malleability are needed in this instance.

Once we accept that the education system serves us badly in England, we can talk about reform. And I have to disagree with you again about the nature of that reform. Selective education at age 11 meant that a huge number of people were essentially condemned to a second-class education when they had barely started their secondary education. I wonder how many people who went to secondary moderns instead of grammar schools would like to see that system introduced? Very few, i suspect.

I’ve advised parents whose kids were denied places at the heavily-oversubscribed good local school and who were placed instead at the poorly performing one much further down the road. As a result many kept their kids at home rather than send them to dangerous, ill-disciplined, academically poor alternatives. The re-introduction of the 11+ would merely entrench this state of affairs. The only way that i can see how it wouldn’t is if so much time and effort were put into the schools that weren’t selective that parents would be happy to send their kids there instead. Which would rather defeat the point of selection, surely?

I would however prefer a wholesale return to state selective education with the 11+ re-introduced. The move to comprehensive education for all has brought standards down, particularly in the poorest areas. Many other European countries still have streaming in their state education systems (Germany included) - we need a return to that sort of a system and only a Conservative government would have the balls to do so.

thanks for your reply.

you liked the assisted places scheme! wow. the old headmaster of my school called the AP scheme ‘giving dinner at the ritz to a few thousand people when millions are starving’. quite stark and emotive, but i agree with his basic thrust. the scheme always struck me as an admission that the state system was rubbish and, rather than try to improve it, why not just bung a few quid to the ‘lucky few’ to opt out. it seemed like an horrific watse of public money, except, of course, to those who received it. by the same token, why not find the sickest patient in each hospital and give them five thousand pounds of public money to go private? or pick the most harrassed commuter form each train and pay for them to go by taxi every morning? i really didn’t like the scheme, as you can guess! i’d rather see the money, such as it was, spent on improving state schools so that people didn’t feel the need to opt out or escape. the AP money alone wouldn’t have achieved that, only a real commitment to education, which is partly about taxpayers’ money, but also about the way kids are taught, will do that. i like the finnish sytem, personally.

i could happily respond to all the other points, but i fear that i will make this site a ‘tarquin manifesto’ with the ucl tories peeking out from underneath, so for everybody’s sake i’d best leave it there! the only thing i will say to defend the LDs is that their stance on iraq really wasn’t political opportunism. Opportunism is often the easy option, which is what going along with Blair would have been - after all, he had a huge amount of political cover had he done so. Kennedy genuinely wasn’t convinced by either the ‘threat’ argument or by the legality, and he was crapping himself that WMDs would be found and he’d have made the most monumental misjudgement. i spoke to people in the LD cabinet, and whether you want to believe me or not, that was the case.

The reason I am a member of the conservative party is for reasons such as the NHS health policies I have already stated - plus other more traditional conservative policies such as selective education and assisted places. I have grown up on council estates as a son of divorced parents, though was lucky enough to go to private school, and know full well the state of Britain for the everyday person. I know full well the possible effects a broken family can have. For me the welfare state also needs reform - notably in areas such as national insurance - the current system rewards those who sit on their arses rather than attempting to get a job - I would rather see a system where those who are working, in whatever sense (Even volunteer work), have their wages subsidised rather than simply dishing out relief to the unemployed willy nilly. I know that although this isn’t a traditional conservative view, neither the lib dems or labour would even consider reforming the welfare system as it stands.

Michael Portillo doesn’t have any political balls - why do you think he has stepped out of politics? The threat is not just from terrorists - both North Korea and Iran have nuclear programmes and both countries are run by increasingly paranoid leaders. That is ignoring the steady frosting up of relations that there has been in recent years with China.

With regards to the Iraq War if I was told that the UK was under threat of attack from Iraq then I would make all moves to disarm Iraq. Do you think the Tories would support such an unpopular measure if there was no threat. Of the 1 million people who gathered in London there was a large islamic contingent concerned that it was a wholesale attack on islam. Not everybody in London that day was concerned because they didn’t think Saddam had WMDs. I do however take your point with regards to the illegality of the war and the Conservatives probably should have pushed the government for further approval from the UN. I do also believe however that it was a rare case of political opportunism from the Lib Dems - knowing full well that there was an election coming in a couple years and knowing full well that they might be able to capitalise politically on any governmental cock ups. (Not that the Conservatives have never done this in the past.)

I do feel that something needs to be done about Mugabe and that any humanitarian crap that the government has produced to justify the war is tosh- if they had cared so much about humanitarian crises then there are other greater ones. Although the conservatives haven’t pushed for any movement in Darfur lets not forget that they aren’t ignoring other international problems - George Osborne has stated that a conservative government will give £500 million to fight Malaria in the third world - matching the financial comitment of the USA.