Blackmailed into school choice

15 July 2005

Grantham Journal article

One of the curses which I promised to campaign against in my election manifesto was the way parents are forced to choose secondary schools.

It is illogical. It is educationally damaging. Worst of all, it is horribly, and quite unnecessarily, cruel.

Lincolnshire Education Authority, operating under Government diktat, forces parents to choose a secondary school before their childrens’ 11+ results are known. In short, parents have to choose blind.

At the same time, all secondary schools give preference to those who make them first choice. So if a parent’s first choice is a grammar school and the child fails the 11+ he or she will go to the back of the queue.

Such a system hardly makes educational sense – unless you believe that educational choices are best made in ignorance of the relevant facts.

So what is the explanation? That – sadly – is an easy one. It is hatred of grammar schools, and a desire to discourage parents from choosing them.

Are these Machiavellian tactics working? I used to think not. Now I wonder.
I visited one of the 3 grammar schools in my constituency last week. I discovered they were 3 pupils below capacity for the coming year. Why? Not because there were insufficient children who could pass the 11+, or because not enough parents liked the school – far from it - but because they had been blackmailed into not choosing the grammar school they would have wanted for fear of losing their second choice if their child failed the 11+.

Should all bright children go to grammar schools? Not necessarily. It is horses for courses. That is why I believe so fundamentally in choice.

But choices made in enforced ignorance, or under fear, are not likely to be good choices.

No child’s prospects should be unnecessarily constrained or blighted by perverse bureaucracy or political prejudice.

I fear that today in Lincolnshire that is exactly what is happening.

If I cannot vote down the Government, I will continue to take every opportunity to expose the evil.