The BBC reports:

The Conservatives are to abandon their support for grammar schools by saying academic selection is unfair to poorer families and limits social mobility.

Education spokesman David Willetts told the BBC that middle-class children dominated the grammar intake, saying “not many poor children” got in…

Have the Conservatives gone nuts? Do they even know what they are talking about?  Apparently, “yes” and “no”.

…But he told the BBC that existing grammar schools would not be axed…

How generous of them. Some backdrop. Grammar schools (which likely produced many Conservative MPs) are part of the state system, but require pupils pass an entrance exam.  As state schools they don’t require fees be paid. Therefore middle class parents love them because the students get a superb education paid for by their (not exactly light) taxes . . . for ONLY those students academically strong enough to make the cut. 

Those who can’t aren’t admitted. Those students have other choices: state comprehensives (the equivalent of U.S. public schools), private schools, or the new “academies”. So why grammars have become considered virtually evil (and are now a dwindling choice) in a national educational environment which presumably has as its ultimate aim the making sure that as many children as possible get the best education possible is hard to understand. But, then again, education itself is not really the issue.

(Full disclosure: my wife attended a London Catholic girls-only grammar, and her disgust with this Conservative stance knows almost no bounds.  But since her having attended a grammar makes her “elitist” according to these weird Conservatives, and it having been a “faith school” also makes her by Labour definition a bigot, her politely choosing to disagree — “Who on earth does this pompous **** think are the ‘ruling classes’?  When he came in I had thought David Cameron was going to be a breath of fresh air, but they are just another ‘New Labour’.  Who’s left?  Do I have to vote UK Independence Party?!” — is not unexpected.) 

…Rather than helping bright children from poor backgrounds, Mr Willetts told the CBI: “We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids.

“We just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it.”

First, how does one fairly ascertain who is “bright” in terms of admissions without some form of an examination?  A winning smile?  Secondly, what “entrenches advantage” is Mr Willetts talking about?  Those “middle class” children are bright and motivated of course; however grammars serve not as a way to “keep down” poor children, but rather as an accessible outlet for bright children whose parents cannot afford to send their child to an elite and very expensive private school (like Eton).

Obviously, for this Conservative party, middle class parents having an educational option that actually provides a solid academic education is a no-no.  Indeed, let’s talk about entrenching privilege.  Rather than having grammars that enable bright students to get a good education many of their parents could not afford privately, these dippy Conservatives think further discrediting that mode of education is a useful policy outlook? 

Fine.  So the well-to-do send their children to super-elite private schools.  And a percentage of middle class parents who do earn enough to be in the private school financial ballpark struggle to take out a second mortgage, other loans and work two jobs to send their bright child to an actual educational establishment; but those academically bright students whose parents simply can’t manage to find the means get condemned to seeing themselves dropped among a mob in a comprehensive.  No wonder this dumb Conservative party keeps getting blasted nationally at the polls.

“[Academy schools] are doing well in very difficult circumstances. They show that proper academic rigour should never just be reserved for the leafy suburbs and for prosperous families. We in the Conservative Party back them wholeheartedly,” Mr Willetts said…

Oh, “academies” are to be the alternative?  Evidently, these Conservatives could use some education themselves. Since when did education have to be a “zero-sum” matter?  What’s wrong with having grammars AND “academy schools”? Indeed, how many “academy schools” are there in Mr Willetts’ “leafy suburbs” to take in the students rejected from grammars?:

…Academies are non-fee paying, non-selective state schools, which operate outside the control of local education authorities and have private sponsors.

The government is seeking to use them as a way of raising standards in the most deprived areas of England…

Mr Willetts tells us with a straight face that academy schools, which have NO entrance minimum academic requirements, are to be compared to academically rigorous grammar schools?  That is little short of laughable.  But then the Conservatives seem determined to be laughable on this issue. 

The bottom line is poorer children are not excluded from grammars, for no child who cannot pass the entrance exam is admitted.  Most would think that might make sense, since the last thing other children ever need in any class are weaker students holding them back, or being disruptive.  And those who are excluded, remember, are excluded regardless of family income; middle class families who have less talented offspring similarly see them unable to get in if they don’t get through the entrance exam.

One would think a conservative party would understand such fundamentals.  However, for this increasingly ridiculous Conservative party, families actually taking serious interest in their child’s education are condemned as being discriminatory-minded, exclusionist plotters.  How did Conservatives arrive at this nuanced policy outlook?  This is the illogic upon which the Conservatives’ illogic is apparently based:

Children who go to grammar schools in England achieve better grades than those of similar ability who are not in selective areas, researchers claim.

Right off the bat, there’s a huge problem with that premise: again, how exactly, without exams, one ascertains what constitutes “those of similar ability” between groups of children is hard to grasp.  Unfortunately (but such is life),  exams still provide the single most reliable measurement of relative knowledge.  (Or perhaps Conservatives also favor handing out driving licenses on the basis of . . . what?, rather than based on a written exam and practical road test, because middle class young people are more likely to have parents with cars, therefore enabling those teenagers to learn the rules of the road better and practice more behind the wheel in order to prepare for their tests?)

A Bristol University study suggested pupils from poorer backgrounds do particularly well.

But relatively few children from the poorest families go to grammar schools…

That is the attempting to define as mutually exclusive two points that are clearly not. Fewer poorer students attend grammars because 1) like many middle class kids, they cannot pass the entrance exams but 2) also because grammars are no longer likely located in “poorer” areas (mostly because of brilliantly “inclusive” educational policies), so as a consequence naturally not as many “poorer” children are living close enough by to try to attend such schools.  But those who do live by, choose to take the exam, pass and enroll, after entering amazingly do well because they are actually . . . smart, and should be there just like everyone else who passed. 

The real issue here of course is not education, but looking to win votes from those supposedly ideological opposed to selection and catering to a misplaced ”social engineering” mindset.  For the real answers are quite simple: if it must be deemed from “on high” that there aren’t enough “poor students” percentage-wise in a grammar in those areas where a grammar is still a (fading) option, what such students need is a boost in their pre-11 educations that will enable more to pass the entrance exam, NOT a policy to diminish the contributions of the few remaining grammars.  Even the Eton-educated Mr Cameron seems to grasp one factor, saying:

…The debate over a few grammar schools was “pointless” because it was impossible to build new ones anyway…

Yet the notion that a solution might well be there should be MORE grammars has obviously not entered a Conservative head.  (Probably because they believe there are no new votes to be had.)  For MORE such schools in “poorer” areas might well mean larger numbers of poor, bright students will get an opportunity to earn a place.  Worth a shot that?  Of course not.  Better to blather on about “providing educational opportunities” while implementing policies that actually do the exact opposite. 

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Funnily enough, we are told Mr Willetts himself attended a grammar (”Education: King Edward VI, Birmingham“).  Given his anti-grammar passion, one wonders when was the last time Mr Willetts bothered to take a glance at his old school’s web site.  Doesn’t look particularly “excluding”, does it?

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UPDATE, The BBC reports (via my wife):

…Penelope Fillon, 51, from the Monmouthshire town of Abergavenny, has become the first British woman to be married to a French prime minister.

Her husband Francois Fillon has been named premier by newly-elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The couple, who have five children, are the new guardians of their official residence, Paris’s Palais Matignon.

Mrs Fillon studied French to A-level at the King Henry VIII grammar school in Abergavenny before she became a law student in France and married her husband 27 years ago…

Absolutely disgraceful of her . . . having the nerve to have been to a grammar school.