Jim Knight MP - Sunday 3rd June 2007

Sunday 3rd June 2007

It has been a lovely weekend to be in Weymouth. Beautiful weather and yesterday I was lucky enough to be taken out on the water by friends in their boat.

Meanwhile the education debate has focussed around the Conservatives for a change. For those that are interested I've put together a few quotes on grammar schools.

October 2005
Cameron is education spokesman for Tories, he writes in The Standard (18/10):
"I want to give academies - and, over time, all schools - the freedom to run their own admissions policy...Some schools will want to select by academic ability"
in The Spectator (27/9/05):
"it means ...not just support for grammar schools and selection"

Then flip to..

Summer and Autumn of 2006 passage of the Education and Inspections Bill. The Tories support the Bill which makes any new selection illegal. This means any new grammar schools, including in Buckhamshire, would need a change in the law as well as a new Admissions Code. Willetts says on 24th May in the Commons Third Reading debate:

"I fully recognise that my party’s approach to the issue of selection has changed. In the process of forming a consensus on the best way of reforming education, we have abandoned any idea of a grammar school in every town. We have abandoned any idea of bringing back the 11-plus in grammar schools. We have recognised that our focus should be on how we can best raise standards in all our nation’s schools. If there is to be selection, it is best for it to take place by means of setting within schools rather than allowing children across the country to face an invidious decision, at the age of 11, on which school they should attend. Of course we wish to support the grammar schools that survive—they are institutions with a long history—but my party will not bring back the 11-plus, and will not bring back grammar schools."

He then led his party into the lobbies to support the Bill (including Graham Brady!)

Then this month this is reconfirmed:

David Cameron says:
"I lead. I don't follow my party. I lead them." (BBC Today 22 May 07)

"I think that it is delusional to think that a policy of expanding a number of grammar schools is either a good idea, a sellable idea or even the right idea" (BBC Today 22 May 07)

"I made very clear that we weren't going to have a policy of a handful of extra grammar schools, that I thought was backward looking" (BBC Today 22 May 07)

Leading not following he allows Graham Brady to resign, Brady's constituency is in wholly selective Trafford.

Then yesterday flop as Dominic Grieve in wholly selective Buckinghamshire writes in his paper that his county may need extra grammar schools to cope with population expansion.

Shadow Schools minister Nick Gibb says:

"we will look on a case by case basis to see whether there is a case for building one or two more grammar schools simply to maintain the status quo."

Sounds like a "delusional" "handful" of grammar schools to me!