School Choice Debate Returns to England

The frontrunner for Tory leadership is positioning herself as a strong advocate of school choice after decades of stalemate on the issue in the U.K.

AP/Frank Augstein, file
Liz Truss after a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, July 19, 2022. AP/Frank Augstein, file

As education emerges as a key issue in the American midterm elections, school reform is back on the agenda for the British Conservative Party after a long hiatus.

The frontrunner for the party’s leadership, Liz Truss, is pitching herself as the “education prime minister” — not unlike presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis across the pond. 

Ms. Truss has come out in support of publicly funded selective admissions schools, known in the United Kingdom as grammar schools. “I’m a huge supporter of grammar schools,” Ms. Truss said. Her two daughters attend grammar schools.

Her primary opponent, Rishi Sunak, expressed support for the “return” of grammar schools but later walked back his comments, saying he supported “expanding existing grammar schools in local areas.”

It’s an issue that has rarely made its way to the floors of the Palace of Westminster in recent years. Over the past 50 years, grammar schools have been marginalized in British policy, with a longtime consensus in both Labor and Conservative circles in opposition.

Grammar schools are achievement-based admissions public schools. Students test into the schools at age 11 — much like New York’s Hunter College High School.

Under England’s tripartite education system, the state funded three types of public schools between 1945 and the 1970s: elite grammar schools, vocational schools, or “secondary modern” schools — the public schools that served the majority of students. 

The system was criticized for producing unequal outcomes from the schools. It was dismantled in the 1970s in favor of the non-selective comprehensive schools that now serve most British students, like the standard American public school, and many grammar schools became comprehensive schools.

In 1998, the Labor government, under Prime Minister Blair, enacted a ban on new grammar schools. New Yorkers might see parallels to the city’s charter cap. Today, about 160 grammar schools remain in operation. 

Opponents of grammar schools say that the admissions-based schools entrench socio-economic status, rather than providing opportunities for social mobility. Wealthier children make up a higher proportion of grammar school students than comprehensive school students. 

Proponents blame these statistical findings on the grammar cap — saying that remaining grammar schools serve, for the most part, wealthier areas.

While the Conservative Party has maintained nominal support for grammar schools, little has been done to advance their cause.

A Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, in 2007 called education reform proposals in Britain “pointless” because “parents fundamentally don’t want their children divided into sheep and goats at the age of 11.”

In 2016, Prime Minister May — also a Conservative — flirted with lifting the grammar school cap but backed away after political resistance. Ms. May said introducing more grammar schools would be a step toward “true meritocracy.”

“The truth is that we already have selection in our school system — and it’s selection by house price, selection by wealth. That is simply unfair,” Ms. May said in 2016. Her office, however, never succeeded in advancing any policy measures.

While Ms. Truss campaigns on grammar schools, British voters — including Tories — remain divided on the issue. In a recent poll by JL Partners, only 30 percent of British voters favored building more grammar schools, with 27 percent saying they wanted to remove existing grammar schools entirely. 

Among Tory voters, 46 percent of voters supported building more grammar schools. 

Still, a majority — 60 percent — of British voters say they would send their child to a local grammar school if he or she passed the exam. The pollster, James Johnson, says the results show “a mixed picture” but that British voters are not “implacably opposed” to grammar schools.

In addition to grammar schools, Ms. Truss has endorsed “a new wave of free schools,” the British analogue of charter schools.

“For me, it’s about parents and children having the choice of that range of good schools,” she told the Conservative Home last week. “And the more good schools we have, the more choice people have.”


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