Grammars aren't the whole answer: Theresa May's school reforms must go much further

This policy is being developed as we speak, and I am assuming it may get through. So, how can these changes be made to work, and what safeguards will be needed?

As the 11 plus is a toxic exam, the Prime Minister is quite right to abandon it, not least because if primary students in disadvantaged areas were to take it, most would fail. This year, almost half of 11-year-olds taking Sats failed to reach the expected standard in reading, maths and science. As the exam will go, so should transfer at 11. No other major country imposes such a decisive change at this age. Europe is now moving towards lower secondary up to 14 years, and upper secondary post-14, which involves much more technical and practical study. The new grammar schools should start when children are 13 or 14, like the independent school sector.

The Prime Minister is also right to say that the new schools should recruit students both at 13 and 16, as within two years this would create good sixth forms. By 13 or 14, students are more mature than they are at 11, knowing where their interests lie and what they want to study. So at 14, they should develop a system of informed self-selection. Students and parents should be interviewed by the school principal so that they are aware of the challenging nature of an academic curriculum and know that, if their children could not cope with it, they would have to leave. The crucial point here is that such selection would not require any legislative changes.

New grammar schools, of course, are not the only pathway to success. Their objective will be steering students to three A-levels and off to university, just at the time when many graduates are unemployed or underemployed and some are left flipping hamburgers, with £40,000 debts. Going to university is not the be-all and end-all of life so, wherever a new grammar school is approved, a high-quality technical college should be approved for the same catchment area.

The new technical schools could be university technical colleges (UTCs), which I have pioneered over the past seven years. UTC students learn by doing, alongside academic subjects,  thus acquiring the skills necessary for this digital age:  97-100 per cent of UTC leavers at 16 or 18 join the workforce.  

The new grammar schools will focus on academic study, while UTCs prepare youngsters for technical jobs where there is a clear skills shortage: studying computing, coding, engineering, and making and designing things with 3D printers and virtual reality, all while working in teams on projects provided by local businesses. They cover a range of activities, including all forms of engineering, manufacturing, sustainability, life sciences and health.

Alongside the options of attending a more academic or a more technical school at the age of 14, there should be a further choice that is more vocational, focusing on subjects such as hospitality, tourism, health services, graphic design and the creative arts, like the courses at the new career colleges. And as much as university, apprenticeships should be highlighted as a pathway to success. Many UTC students apply for higher apprenticeships at 18, when they can earn between £15,000 and £25,000 a year and, at the same time, do a part-time foundation degree at the cost of their employer; to access these, students have to have technical qualifications as well as A-levels.

Finally, the new grammar schools must recruit a high level of students from disadvantaged areas, whose parents are unemployed or poorly paid. At least 25 per cent of their students should come from that background. If there is only a low percentage, then the new grammars will be filled with students living further afield whose richer parents are only too glad to pay for the extra travelling costs involved. If the new grammar schools have that target percentage, it could become a target for existing grammars, too.

The real challenge for the new policy on grammar schools, if implemented, will be what we must do for those who do not get into them. Comprehensives will lose some of their brightest students, and probably some of their best teachers. They must not be allowed to become as bad as the secondary moderns were. Helping them will probably cost much more than establishing the new grammar schools.

Lord Baker was Education Secretary from 1986 to 1989