A newly established centre-right think tank has argued that Wales should introduce selective education. The paper, written by Dr Ewan Lawry for Prydain, The Welsh Policy Centre, argues that there should be three streams in schools, and ideally three separate school institutions, a grammar school, a technical school, and a general school. Admission to each would be based on an aptitude test at the end of primary school, combined with ongoing assessment by teachers.

Dr Lawry, who chairs Mid and West Wales Conservatives and sits on the Welsh Party Board, insists that the school system he outlined could be quite different from the tripartite system of the past. He mentions parity of esteem between all three pupil groups, movement between schools as children develop, and avoiding total reliance on the 11-plus (which he himself failed as a child).

CF feels there are more questions than answers are raised by these points. How would this parity of esteem be created? A typical parent surely prefers their child to work towards academic goals at the tender age of 11 or 12, and not decide on a practical trade before they have matured and explored all options.

The idea that three distinct schools should be ‘flexible’ is naive. What happens when young people studying highly specific options in the ‘general’ school such as food handling, construction, or bookkeeping, decide they’d rather work for university or a technical career? Schools have a set number of class spaces and teaching hours, they are designed to use these resources well, not expand and contract for significant pupil movement.

We see token attempts to acknowledge pupils develop at different rates in some selective areas today. Bucks offers a 12+ and 13+ alongside the 11+, but it’s practically unworkable. It sees  large numbers entering these later tests, but just a handful moving schools because grammar schools are already full.  If 20 pupils from the practical school want to move to the academic school, would a similar number of academic pupils swap places to the general school? It seems unlikely!

The rationing of places based on school size was a regular problem in the old secondary modern and grammar school days. Someone has to decide what proportion of children are ‘general’, ‘technical’ or ‘academic’. Children’s dreams and aspirations get ignored to shoehorn them into a school place formula with exact percentages.

The school system in Netherlands was mentioned as a positive example of early divisions with great flexibility, but this system  sees pupils repeat years more than almost any other nation. Perhaps this is not a bad thing in itself, but it proves that defining pupils trajectory early can lead to unsettled children moving classrooms. It also sees pupils fighting to stay in the academic stream, because to go down is seen as failure. Selective education seems to cause divisions, and parity of esteem is hard to achieve.

The point that the 11-plus can’t entirely be trusted is also raised in this report, with a nod to Germany’s model with no exam at all just teachers and parents deciding who attends grammar-school style ‘gymnasiums’. Yet the German system is fraught with social inequality, and it means poorer and immigrant pupils are less likely to attend university.  

The bottom line is that selective education has been tried in many forms, but it is rarely used worldwide because it’s fraught with so many problems. Globally the nations with successful education systems are offering comprehensive education at secondary level, and sending children to different education pathways around age 16.

The report by the The Welsh Policy Centre can be read in full HERE.

Joanne Bartley, CF’s Campaign Officer, made the case for comprehensive education in the Pydrain Podcast.