Tory plan is a vote for grammars

Grammar schools would face a comeback under controversial plans to scrap catchment areas. Tories have unveiled their new policy on the allocation of school places which would effectively abolish catchment areas.

In their place, they pledged, they would massively expand the numbers of pupils admitted to schools because of their academic ability, or aptitude in other areas such as sport or the arts. But leading educationists said the plan heralded a return to a two-tier system where good schools would succeed at the expense of the worst.

Former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson - now head of the charity running schools in Hackney - said opening up schools to all parents, regardless of where they lived, would not create real choice, because none would choose to send their children to "sink" schools.

"The fundamental problem is how to ensure that all children get a good education, regardless which school they go to, and we are not moving towards that as quickly as we ought," he said.

Even supporters of selection acknowledged that more grammar schools would only create genuine choice for parents if schools for children with different, non-academic, aptitudes were equally good.

Dr Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at Liverpool University, said: "Abolishing proximity as a means of allocating places would mean inevitably that more schools would select by academic ability.

"But both political parties have to face up to what that means for children who don't get into them, and if the choice is another sub-standard school that is no choice at all."

Shadow education secretary Tim Yeo chose a speech to the National Union of Teachers' conference at the weekend to unveil a radical extension of his party's plans to de-regulate education.

The Tories would tear up the rules on surplus school places, he confirmed, so that new schools could be created even where existing ones were half empty. And parents would effectively be given vouchers covering the cost of state education, to spend at whichever school they liked.

In addition, Mr Yeo promised to end "selection by postcode", which enabled rich parents to win places for their children at the best state schools simply by buying houses in their catchment area.

Research has shown that particularly in London, schools can have a decisive impact on house prices, with homes close to top secondary schools worth up to £40,000 more than those in streets outside the catchment area.

The result, Mr Yeo said, was that those schools were effectively placed beyond the reach of poorer families.

His promise to abolish catchment areas, forbidding schools to use proximity as one

of the criteria for admission, came as a surprise to fellow Tories.

But the Tory leader of Wandsworth council, Malcolm Grimston, said many Tory-controlled councils would leap at the chance to replace selection by postcode with academic selection.

Wandsworth led the way under the last Tory government in taking advantage of legislation - immediately abolished by Labour in 1997 - allowing comprehensive schools to select up to 50 per cent of their pupils by academic ability.

"When schools are that heavily oversubscribed, there has to be some means of selecting pupils," Mr Grimston said. "Mr Yeo is right to say that the existing rules result in parents buying houses near to the best schools. If schools were no longer able to use proximity to award places, they would have to find some other means of selecting."

But John Bangs, assistant secretary of the NUT, said the inevitable result would be the return of a "two tier" system of education.