Ryan Henson: Fixating on grammar schools is the wrong approach to improving children’s life chances | Conservative Home

Ryan Henson is Chief Executive at the Coalition for Global Prosperity, and was the Conservative candidate for Bedford in the 2019 General Election. 

Liz Truss https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/29/liz-truss-suggests-will-lift-ban-new-grammar-schools-pm/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>has said she will reverse the ban on new grammar schools if she is elected leader of the Conservative party next month, kick-starting a much-needed debate on social mobility that was missing during this contest’s first few rounds.

I am not opposed to new grammar schools. Having attended what might have been one of Hertfordshire’s worst performing comprehensives, I sympathise with anyone eager to avoid the same fate for other children.

But as https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-social-mobility-case-against-grammar-schools?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=c9cce27002-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_08_01_05_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-c9cce27002-190613264″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>David Johnston MP has argued, by fixating on the 12 per cent who attend private or grammar schools, we risk getting distracted and forgetting about the other 88 per cent who also deserve an outstanding education. I would add that we also risk overlooking the low hanging fruit beyond education which is ripe for the taking if we are serious about improving social mobility. So here are some ideas for Team Sunak and Team Truss to consider.

Leading child health experts agree that the care given during the first 1,001 days of a child’s life has more influence on their future than at any other time. As the Government’s https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/973112/The_best_start_for_life_a_vision_for_the_1_001_critical_days.pdf” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Early Years Healthy Development Review reported, ‘experiences during this time have a significant impact on the health, wellbeing and opportunity of children throughout life.’

Andrea Leadsom, the Review’s Chair and Parliament’s biggest champion of early years support made 6 recommendations which the Government welcomed. Yet Whitehall still devotes such a disproportionate amount of time, money, and energy trying to close the gate after the horse has bolted. Every few years we get another proposal to tackle obesity or do more to provide mental health support – both worthy and necessary – yet there still appears to be such little focus on early years policy. This is puzzling given the experts are united in believing we can shift the dial on most public health challenges, if we do more to support babies and their parents in those first, crucial, 1,001 days.

Public speaking is another tool that can help widen opportunity and increase social mobility. Being taught to give a speech before an audience is something that is rarely, if ever, something that children from poorer backgrounds get to experience. Yet being able to effectively communicate is a skill that can reap rewards throughout a lifetime.

In his bestselling book, Bounce: The Myth of Talent, and the Power of Practice, Matthew Syed argues that the great orators of history were not born with the ability to move audiences and change the world. They got there through practice. Many business leaders and senior politicians are often very effective public speakers, and it is not a coincidence that a disproportionate number were educated at private schools, where debating is a regular part of school life.

Meanwhile, according to my old school’s Wikipedia page, I am the only former student from my comprehensive – where there were no opportunities in public speaking – to have ever stood for Parliament. Nor is public speaking something that only aspiring politicians need to learn. How difficult is it to sustain a healthy relationship or maintain a professional job, without the ability to debate and communicate, particularly when emotions are involved? We can surely make debating and public speaking a more regular feature of life in every school, without it costing the Earth.

Finally, let there be no more exasperated pleas for people in public life not to speak about their backgrounds, upbringing, or the experiences that have shaped them. Rishi Sunak should be proud of his education at Winchester College and the sacrifices his parents made to send him there. Similarly, Truss is right to draw on her experience at a comprehensive school to highlight areas in education she would like to change.

Not a single one of my friends working in scrap metal yards, or in pubs and restaurants on low wages across Hertfordshire, would deny their child the opportunity to go to a top private school if it was offered to them. Equally, it is a fact that my friends and I were denied the chance to go as far in life as our ability, ambition, and hard work might have taken us, in part due to the poor education we received.

So, for good or for bad, background matters, and politicians cannot authentically relate to those they wish to lead, unless they embrace and share their own. And while we’re at it, until the children of GPs, solicitors, and other middle-class professionals start encouraging their own children to become hairdressers, plumbers, and bricklayers, let there be no more talk about apprenticeships replacing university for working class children. For they are equally as deserving of the right to aspire to become a CEO or to run the country one day.

And as for new grammar schools? A compromise might be to lift the ban, but to ensure that half of all children who attend the new grammars are recipients of free school meals. That would be an authentically Conservative policy that would genuinely widen opportunity. Team Truss and Team Sunak, over to you.