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Pupils during a physics lesson, Manchester Grammar School, 1950.
Pupils during a physics lesson, Manchester Grammar School, 1950. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Pupils during a physics lesson, Manchester Grammar School, 1950. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Debate on grammar schools in the Commons

This article is more than 8 years old

28 November 1964: Comprehensivisation - the word, though we were spared it yesterday, is almost certain to loom up soon

Conservative MPs will fight to the death for the right of other people’s children to go to grammar schools if they can make it. Labour MPs, many of whom actually went to them, are less loyally devoted to this present educational set-up.

That was the way it looked in the Commons yesterday, where the debate on the grammar schools was almost like a satire on the national gift for illogicality which some people call by a harsher name. Successive speeches extolling the grammar schools were made by Tories who went to Winchester, Uppingham, Eton, Dulwich, and Harrow again. Successive speakers upholding the comprehensive system, which would mean the end of the tripartite structure and of the grammar school as we know it now, were made by former pupils of five grammar schools - all devoted old boys but by no means willing to lay down their lives for the cause.

The debate was further embarrassed by the revelations of Mr Morris, the new member for Wythenshawe, about a sample survey indicating a marked tendency on the part of MPs to send their own children to fee-paying schools; but we were delighted to hear from Mr Quintin Hogg that his mother went to a comprehensive school in America. The same description has also been whimsically applied, of course, to Mr Hogg’s own school, Eton.

A word for it
The subject, Mr Hogg declared, is going to be one of the great issues in this Parliament, and he was anxious that local authorities should not be unwillingly pushed into comprehensivisation - the word, though we were spared it yesterday, is almost certain to loom up soon.

After Mr Murton, who went to Uppingham, had spoken glowingly of the excellent grammar and secondary modern schools in his constituency of Poole, and Mr John Astor, an old Etonian, had done the same service for those of Newbury, we had a slightly less glowing report from Mr Morris who has taught in the State schools and actually sends his own children to them.

There was also an expert view from Mr Armstrong (Wolsingham Grammar School and Durham North-west) who has been a primary school headmaster and education committee chairman. He put in a powerful plea for the average and below-average child who looks in danger of getting an increasingly raw deal as things are.

Biggest prize
Encouraging words were also spoken, particularly by the Tories, about the secondary modern schools; and Mr Michael Stewart cast a slight chill over their side of the House by pointing out that the glow of this success is surely dimmed by the fact that the biggest prize available at these schools is the opportunity to get out of them.

There was a collective grammar school cheer - from the Government benches, needless to say - when the Minister made it clear that Labour accepts a reorganisation on comprehensive lines as the right national policy; and the Tories had to find what consolation they could in his further acceptance of the fact that this is not going to happen overnight.

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