Greeting the latest results of the OECD’s triennial tests of educational standards – which, as usual, show that British children, in reading and maths particularly, are average at best – Nick Gibb, the schools minister, says that grammar schools, which the government plans to expand on a large scale, will boost our scores in future. So, can he explain why, whether it’s reading, maths or science, none of the top ten countries, which include China, Singapore, Japan, Canada and Finland, has its own version of anything resembling English grammar schools? True, some of them place pupils into academic and vocational streams and even separate schools at the age of 14, but none selects at 11 as our grammar schools do.
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