IN MARCH 2000, PARENTS IN RIPON, North Yorkshire voted by 1,493 to 747 to retain the city’s grammar school. The vote had been held under a clause in the Schools Standards and Framework Act (1998) which effectively banned new grammar schools from opening and created a mechanism by which existing grammar schools could be abolished. The Campaign for State Education had forced the ballot in the hope of making Ripon Grammar School the first of the remaining 166 grammar schools to fall. Instead, it became an historical footnote as the only such referendum to be held.
It is surprising that Peter Hitchens does not mention this event in his recent book, A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System, since it supports his view that grammar schools were never unpopular. No stranger to a lost cause, Hitchens champions selection by ability and would like to see grammar schools return in great numbers. Despite occasional promises from Conservative leaders to revive the eleven-plus exam, this is even less likely than Hitchens’s dream of abolishing British Summer Time and flinging cannabis users in prison. He admits that the battle is “utterly lost”.
The book is an invigorating read nonetheless and made me consider my own position. I happened to be a pupil at Ripon Grammar between 1987 and 1994. For many years,
