Doing What's Best

It goes without saying that parents want what is best for their children (even if the children do not necessarily think it's what they want - or need), the general principle being that as parents we want our children to have opportunities that we did not have in order to be able to make the best of their lives. This does not mean giving in to the child's ever whim, it does not mean featherbedding them - and there are plenty of examples of the rich and famous declaring that they will not simply bankroll their offspring, but will make them work for their successes, although how much of that is simply said for publicity and how much of it is true is moot.

Giving your child the best start they can have and equipping them for their adult lives starts with education. Everyone will have a view on what constitutes the best form of education their child can receive, whether it is a private school or a state school, grammar school or comprehensive: even at primary school level, parents go to great lengths to ensure that their children get into their school of choice. So the news that Baroness Chakrabarti, former director of human rights group, Liberty and now the Labour shadow attorney general, is sending her son to Dulwich College, an independent school to whom she will pay £18,000 a year in fees for his education, ought to be no one's business but hers.  

Baroness Chakrabarti

Well it would not have been had not been for the fact that at the same time as Chakrabarti was revealing that her son would be attending what many regard to be an elitist school, she was voicing her opposition to grammar schools on the grounds that they are selective. Which of course is what Dulwich College is. Inevitably this has led to her being accused of hypocrisy, which as Alan Bennett once said, is something that Britain excels at - and, I would say, condemns in equal measure. But accusing a politician of being a hypocrite is a bit like accusing a bear of being hairy.  A sign saying, "Don't do as I do, do as I say," might as well be hanging over the door at Westminster, where it almost seems that hypocrisy is a prerequisite for political office.

I have no problem with the baroness wanting to give her child the best education she can. Just like Diane Abbott, whose son went to the private City of London school, or Emily Thornberry, whose child went to Dame Alice Owens School. They both also felt that they were sending their children to schools that would enable them to achieve the most. How can I object to Chakrabarti sending her son to a selective school if that is what she wants to do and can afford to do and while the option remains open to them? But Chakrabarti, Abbott and Thornberry all took the opportunity to send their offspring to selective, grammar type schools while arguing that grammar schools are socially divisive, elitist and perpetuate inequality. The argument that opponents of grammar schools use is often equality, that a school system that does not include grammar schools must be fairer, must promote equality. And because they believe that grammar schools sustain inequality and elitism, and that these twin evils must be eradicated, the manner in which they propose levelling the playing field is not to raise every other school to the standards of the schools they send their children too, but to reduce all other schools to the lowest common denominator. Naturally, this would not affect the selective, fee paying schools they favour with their custom; it speaks of an attitude summed up by Gore Vidal when he said, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

Dulwich College

What idealists who imagine a grammar school-free world to be is some utopia where all children can thrive regardless of ability in environments that do not favour the more able at the expense of the less gifted. Have these people never been to a school of any kind recently? All schools, be they secondary-modern, comprehensive or grammar, will have children of varying abilities. In the interests of getting the best out of people, schools stream their pupils, even the non-grammar schools. And if they don't then the gifted get held back, but the less able are no better off.  And if the school isn't streaming, then an informal hierarchy will form itself because anyone who believes that children of secondary school age are all fair-minded, egalitarian and not at all prone to forming cliques or creating their own social rankings was presumably born middle-aged.

My alma mater, North Romford Comprehensive School - now closed and demolished.

As it happens, I am not a fervent supporter of grammar schools; I didn't go to one and neither did my wife or most of my friends, but I see no reason why they should not exist, nor why parents should not have the opportunity to send their children to them. My wife and I, and our children, went to various comprehensive schools, and while I can't say that my school days were the happiest of my life, I cannot fault the education I got at my school, which was what Alastair Campbell would have called a 'bog-standard comprehensive.' What I am a supporter of, however is freedom of choice, and if people want to send their children to fee-paying, selective schools, they should have the right to; if they want to send them to selective grammar schools, they should be able to. If they want to send them to comprehensive schools - and I reiterate, there is nothing wrong with the comprehensive school - they should be able to.

What they should not have to do is have their choice of school limited by people who make rules that they do not believe should apply to them.