William Kitchen: ​Grammar school heads need to beware of evidence designed to bring about the demise of their schools

The team of researchers, led by Professor Joanne Hughes, are proposing to undertake research into academic selection. They put the following methodological justification for their research funding proposal in their correspondence to the heads: “At [sic] part of our methodology, we are proposing deliberative polling events, where we would present best available evidence on academic selection and the grammar school system to key stakeholders and then engage them in debate about possible alternative models.”

This part of the research team’s request for engagement from the grammar principals seems to underpin the peculiar view which is held within the corridors of educational influence in Northern Ireland surrounding academic selection. Indeed, this assumes that grammar school heads are uneducated and in need of being more informed about the “best available evidence”, about which they must be as-yet-uniformed. Furthermore, the purpose of the evidence sharing is then laid bare for all to see: to explore “possible alternatives” to the current system.

There are I believe two undertones to this:

1. if you support academic selection, then you must be doing so ignorant of the “best available evidence”;

and 2.

once these proponents of academic selection are furnished with the “best available evidence” – selected by overt opponents of academic selection – the only natural conclusion will, of course, be enlightenment and a shift in one’s previously held erroneous views!

When one undertone is juxtaposed against the other, it underlines the bizarre viewpoint of the anti-academic selection brigade. For clarity, two of the three researchers who are named in this research team – Professor Joanne Hughes and Dr Rebecca Loader – recently published an article which reached a scathing conclusion that an academically selective system is to the detriment of social cohesion and equality of opportunity. Will this be one of the items of “best available evidence”?

In their paper, the summary of the research outcome is as follows: “Drawing on social cohesion theory, we reflect on the grammar school system to argue that the cross-community class interests animating it not only perpetuate inequalities within respective communities but may also present a significant barrier to peacebuilding efforts in education, and ultimately impede progress towards a more socially cohesive society.”

The authors also argue that the most recent AQE/GL selection methods for getting into grammar schools “served to intensify socio-economic and religious division”, as well as offering a firm commitment to the “inclusive ethos” which has underpinned the Integrated sector.

The authors’ recently published paper, however, is important because it serves as a warning to those grammar school heads who have been contacted by this research team to engage in this new research on selection. This is not an opportunity to offer your defence of the system you currently support by virtue of being head of a grammar school. Rather, this is to be your moment of enlightenment, upon which you will return to your grammar school and advocate for its removal! You will realise, on the basis of being presented with the “best available evidence” by this team of educational gurus, that you must embrace reform, and consider the alternatives.

The flaw, however, is entirely apparent. Hughes and Loader are advocating for using schools for the development of social cohesion, and are using this as the main metric of success of the education system inside which we do our work. This is one option, but not the only option for the rationale for schools. The advocates for selection are not building schools to deliver on social cohesion. They do not embrace this view of schools because of the view articulated by the eminent sociologist, Basil Bernstein in 1964 when he contested that over a century of sociological evidence confirmed that schools cannot fix society’s problems.

The American economist and social commentator Thomas Sowell similarly argued that we ought to dismiss our obsession with what he called “cosmic justice” within our school system, and focus our attention more on setting high academic standards for our children; indeed this is the most impactful way in which to create upward social mobility.

Proponents of academic selection measure the success of their system of education using a different metric than its capacity to deliver social cohesion; namely, on educational (not social) standards and outcomes. It might shock Professors of Education everywhere to learn that there are folk within education who are interested in using schools to develop academic excellence and to encourage pupils to work hard and see reward for that hard work, rather than for the purposes of social engineering.

Any grammar school head who does take up the offer to participate in this research, be warned: I believe that the “best available evidence” means carefully selected evidence which is designed to bring about the demise of your schools.

Fight for your schools, and do so unapologetically under the banner of academic excellence. Fight for them knowing that the eminent sociologists Heath, Ermisch and Gallie wrote in 2005 in their seminal work, Understanding Social Change, about the failures of comprehensive (non-selective) education in comparison to selective education, not only in terms of its negative impact on educational standards and outcomes, but also in that it failed to narrow social differentials or to deliver greater social cohesion. Stand firm; your schools, parents, and pupils need you.

• Dr William H Kitchen is a Senior Lecturer, Stranmillis University College