Good education is selective education, or is it? Do grammar schools do a good job, or should they be eased out of existence?

The argument rages, with campaigners against selection in England attempting to organise local ballots on whether the 11-plus should be scrapped.

Giving both sides an opportunity to have their say, BBC Radio 4's Them and Us series aired a debate on the issue.

After considering the arguments, BBC News Online users continued the discussion online.

Click here to read the comments.

The radio debate was chaired by Diana Madill.

 Click here to listen.

MADILL
Welcome to Them and Us - your opportunity to speak up and vote on what matters to you. Tonight, the battle over grammar schools and where better to debate that than here in Trafford in South Manchester, an area where all youngsters sit the 11-plus and a third of them pass, or, put another way, two thirds of them fail. The question this evening: good education is selective education, or is it?

In the 1960s the Labour Education Secretary Tony Crosland famously swore he would close every grammar school in the country, and ever since grammar schools have been a political football. John Major swore he'd bring them back.

In their heyday there were more than 1000, now there are 164. Today's government says parents can decide on whether those few grammar schools which make up only 5% now of England's secondary schools, should stay.

Many parents facing that choice here in Trafford are with us now and as we'll hear, this is an issue which goes to the heart of what education is for.

Are grammar schools to be preserved for the few, and do poor kids really have a chance of getting in to them?

If they become comprehensives, can their academic success be maintained or built upon, and is all desire to destroy them driven by noble motives, or envy?

We've four panellists to start our debate tonight, each one passionately involved in education, the first is Elspeth Insch, the head of King Edward VI Handsworth, a girls' grammar which has some of the best A-level results in the country:

INSCH
What is so special about grammar schools? "Discipline is good, teachers teach without having to constantly maintain order. Clever people are not bullied or teased because they want to learn. "People of all social and ethnic groups are able to mix. The pace of work is fast, tests are hard, complex ideas are a normal part of lessons.

"Teachers stimulate and support the most able. Pupils are encouraged to be ambitious."

Ooh I can see the opposition bridling in the audience but those are not my words, those are some of my pupils - in a grammar school - who were once in other secondary schools. They believe they can spot the difference. They cannot understand why some people wish to close such good schools.

What other issue would expose such widespread hypocrisy? People who owe their own success to grammar schools now seek to close them. Parents of grammar school children who want to deny other people's children the same opportunity.

People who send their own offspring to leading independent schools but who campaign to prevent other children enjoying the same specialist academic education.

"Vote to end selection and you will open these good schools for all," they say. No. You cannot have grammar schools without academic selection.

Selecting the few does not harm the many. I want this country to leave the educational pack, to provide choice for parents, variety for children. My vision is an education system built upon opportunity for each child and the needs of each child. I believe in diversity not destruction. No other country in the world is trying to get rid of schools widely regarded as amongst its best.

Ladies and gentlemen I urge you to vote for the motion. Thank you.

MADILL
And leading the argument on the other side is Professor Richard Pring, who has a distinguished reputation as one of the best teacher trainers in the country and is such a passionate advocate of comprehensive education that he's travelled all the way up from Oxford today to make the point.

PRING
Well first of all I'm very grateful for this invitation. I was a product of a grammar school, I have a high regard for what grammar schools have achieved in the past but I do believe now they represent values that are in the past and we've now got to look forward to a system of education which takes every child seriously and takes seriously too the range of talent that there is amongst those children.

The selection system is based on four premises. It was based - and this is quite explicit in various reports - in there being two types of children, namely those who are intelligent and those who are not so intelligent.

Secondly that these differences are innate. Thirdly and therefore they're more a product of what you've inherited rather than the nurturing of education. That these differences - innate differences - can be detected with confidence at the age of 11 through particular tests and then, having detected these differences, we need to put these children into two quite separate institutions in order to meet their educational needs.

These premises are wrong and are proven to be wrong. We now know much more about there being many different sorts of intelligence - one can refer to the work at Harvard University on this but it's well known for a long time.

These intelligences are overlapping. Think of the speed with which some people - often written off - can pick up quickly things to do with computers and the whole of information technology.

These different kinds of intelligence depend upon nurturing. That great education minister Edward Boyle said at the preface to the great report: "We must help all children to acquire intelligence."

And thirdly the intelligence tests which were set up in order to make these discriminations were absolutely flawed based on unbelievably bad research and it's now shown that about 10% of people were misplaced and continue to be misplaced on these sorts of tests.

We do now know, of course we can swap around statistics but now we're seeing the comprehensive system really coming of age where able children - there's lots of evidence now and if you want I'll come out with it, there's lots of evidence to show that by and large very able children will do just as well in a good comprehensive system as indeed in a selective system.

What we do know is that where you have selection there is a depression of the results of those who are not selected and that we, as a society, cannot tolerate any longer.

MADILL
Our other two panellists are local parents. First Chris Tyler who believes that we should be fighting to defend selective education.

TYLER
Like every parent all I really want is the best for my children and I recognise that the different children have different strengths and weaknesses.

I believe that our education system has to balance two opposing forces. The need to provide a broad curriculum in all, what we might call, standard subjects but also the need to specialise in particular areas, to provide sufficient stimulation to make sure we make the most of children's different talents.

Now this is nothing new of course the government's currently investing heavily in all sorts of schemes to create secondary schools which specialise: technology colleges, sports colleges, special aid for helping bright children in inner city areas.

The main thrust of my argument is that we already have a scheme for academically bright children - it's called grammar schools.

Now Trafford - the LEA in which this debate's happening tonight - has a number of selective schools: it's got seven grammar schools, it's got two technology colleges - one of which is tonight's venue - a high school with special sports college status. And I see nothing wrong with that as long as the system is fair to everybody and all of the schools in the borough are of excellent quality.

Well let's look at fairness then first of all. Trafford has an exam to find out which children will most benefit from grammar schools. The point is that everyone has a chance - no matter what their background - we take away that 11-plus some parents will still have a choice, they'll simply move house to the leafy suburbs, they'll ensure they're in the catchment area of their choice. And I'm hoping our opponents tonight are going to explain what's fair about that as a system?

Now Trafford's selective system just speaks for itself. Last year we were the top local education authority in the whole of the North West of England.

This year the 14-year-old national test results - the test that every state child takes at the age of 14 - puts Trafford at number two in England. I'm very proud of Trafford's local education authority, it has a marvellous record of achievement and I'm against anything that might damage that just for the sake of political dogma.

MADILL
And finally Malcolm Clarke, another parent, who disagrees with 11-plus selection.

CLARKE
I would like to start by making two comments on the contributions we've already heard. The first is that Elspeth's description of a grammar school is actually a description of any good school of any type and I think it's rather patronising to imply that that is a description of a grammar school.

The second argument that I'd like to make is that this is about education not about political dogma. We are not interested in politics, we are interested in educational arguments.

In Trafford, which uses the IQ test which Professor Pring has rightly commented are extremely unreliable, a quarter of the children fall within 10 marks of the pass mark and for those and for the 550 children each year who go through a hurried arbitrary and highly selective review process it is effectively a lottery for those children.

The most lower pass rate for boys than girls is particularly damaging. The 11-plus breaks up family and friendship groups and affects the self esteem of many children who feel labelled as failures including many of above average ability.

As the headteacher of Lostock High School recently put it: "The 11-plus is a self-ulfilling prophesy: if someone tells you that you are a failure you may start to believe it."

But what I'd like to stress is that this is not about the quality of individual schools. Schools of all types can be good or not so good - Ofsted looks at that. There are many excellent schools in Trafford.

The people who are really attacking our schools here are those who say that the staff of this school, Sale Grammar School and Aston School, and the children of Sale cannot produce excellent results without an 11-plus - of course they can.

Selection by income occurs now, for those who can afford private 11-plus coaching either at home or at an independent school.

Finally I'd like to say that of the 32 LEAs where half or more children get five A-Cs, only three have an 11-plus system, 21 have no selective schools at all and eight have a small number of grammar schools.

If you look at Trafford's performance and you look at the performance for all children and not just the top half it slips to 27th and it is not the best in the North West. V But the most serious consequence of Trafford's system, if the disastrously low proportion of children that we have who take A-levels, much lower than all of the surrounding areas and that is the point on which I think we should concentrate.

MADILL
So there you have the position of the four panellists tonight. Let's have a quick reaction from the audience first of all. This lady here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I'm a parent of three children, two of whom are at high schools in Sale - one at a grammar school and one at a high school. And I would like to return to your comment Elspeth about choosing the few does not harm the many because that is not my experience.

My son - my elder child - has been completely devastated. If you had seen that child's face when his sister was on the phone to her friends, all congratulating each other at having "passed" - and this is not my terminology, this is the children's.

And if you could have seen that child's face as he went through the day considering himself to be a failure and I do not see how you can say that choosing the few does not harm the many if you have not witnessed the catastrophic impact of this upon a family, not just on children but on a family.

MADILL
Elspeth.

INSCH
There are really two points to say in response to that. First of all I believe very firmly that if parents are having - exercising a choice - to put their children in for a test or to say your local school is fine ...

AUDIENCE MEMBER
That is no choice.

MADILL
Okay I want to take one more view from the floor before we move on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
To talk about a fair selective system, that's completely disingenuous, there is no fair selection system. And I think also to talk about specialist schools - such as the technology college - as some sort of consolation prize that you get awarded if you fail is really disingenuous too.

My own personal experience is that I passed the 11-plus and went to grammar school at 11 a year after my sister had failed and I do not believe anybody who says it does not inflict damage, it inflicted damage on my relationship with my sister for more than 20 years.

How does any child feel at the age of 11 and 12 when the younger sibling - as in my case - passes? I felt wrong about it, my sister felt pain about it, that always happens in my experience.

MADILL
What about this particular stigma that is attached - what about this stigma that lasts for years and years throughout families and is felt so bitterly?

INSCH
Yes I've been talking to the group of girls who provided those opening statements for me and I've specifically pumped them about the failure and I've spoken to about 20 girls aged from about 13 through to 18. Interestingly enough they all said - oh no because we knew where I am in Birmingham that your chances of getting in are very, very slim - it's a very different selection system to here.

What I would say to you is that we do actually deal with people whose children have not got in to the grammar school. I don't see them as failures and I don't think their parents - if they're wise - do either and allow them to do that.

MADILL
Let me move on. This lady here at the front.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I just want to make a comment and probably a question as well to the Professor. He just mentioned that intelligent people would do well anyway. I'm a parent of two children: one went through a comprehensive education and one is currently at the Trafford school system - the grammar school system - and I can see they're both about equal level of intelligence and capacity and I can see very clearly that my daughter did not meet her capacity through going through the comprehensive school - which was a very good school - and yet my son is doing absolutely so well because of the way they are taught and so on.

And also I would like to ask the professor what sort of school did he go to? And I'm speaking from my experience as an education psychologist.

MADILL
You heard Professor Pring say he did go to a grammar school when he was a youngster.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Exactly. It proves my point where you've reached today.

PRING
No it doesn't prove your point at all because there were... First of all, may I say, I couldn't have gone to a grammar school [sic] because I'm now an elderly gentleman and there weren't comprehensive schools when I was at that age. I did send all my three daughters to the local comprehensive school and I think they got an exceedingly good education there.

I am delighted now, and I fully take the position, that one of the difficulties in the past is we've had an educational system that is run by people who themselves did not demonstrate their believe in that system and that has been one of the things that's held back the comprehensive system. But now we have a prime minister, we have a secretary of state for education and we have a permanent secretary ...

INSCH
A prime minister with his children in selective schools.

PRING
.. all send their [inaudible words] comprehensive system. But may I just say in relationship to that particular question, I mean one can talk about individual schools, let's look at the national picture.

There has been, recently, the education select committee - education and employment select committee - looked at the provision for highly able children across the whole country and came to the conclusion that there's no evidence that one type of school is any better than the other in terms of comprehensive or the grammar for the able children.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I'm sorry because I've got proof of the pudding in my own family.

PRING
Well in that case you just ought to receive - I'm sorry - you ought to go and look now at the evidence of the select committee report which is quite conclusive on that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Well the sample may not have been right for us.

PRING
And secondly, secondly the other thing is that you've got to say is that what we do know from the actual analysis of all the various statistical thing, there is an enormous of variation between schools within the same type - whether that be in comprehensive or whether that be in selective - so you can always find a school here and compare it with a school there and say there isn't a difference.

What one has got to look at is what the system as a whole and the system as a whole does not back up, I'm sorry to say, the system as a whole does not back up - in the light of evidence - what you are saying.

MADILL
I want to go to the floor again. This lady here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Right I've listened carefully to the arguments and I've tried to consider on a number of fronts what would be achieved by changing the system in Trafford. Trafford does get top results across all its schools so I can't see an educational argument for it. The cost would be enormous - into the millions - and there is no extra funding for it.

The argument that has resonance with me is about the effect of selection. But the fact that the selection is a fact of life, everywhere you look you are going to be selected at all ages, in many ways you're more robust at 10.

The fact is - no it's true - because if you look at selection you're selected for your football team, you're selected for what stream you go into in the comprehensive school, you're selected for the sixth form, for higher education and ultimately you're selected for a job.

Now surely as parents, as sensitive parents, we should be making our children more robust to deal with disappointment and to handle it so that they're stronger in the future where they won't always come out on top.

MADILL
This gentleman here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
My name is Paul English, I went to a secondary modern school, I have a first degree and a masters degree from that secondary modern school, which I had to do a little bit later because I was a product of the selective failure system. I have three children at school in Trafford. I have one who is a 10-year-old who is not going to sit the 11-plus system because she's going to go to her local school, in which I have invested time and energy and in which I have faith.

MADILL
So you're not giving your child a chance to do the 11-plus?

AUDIENCE MEMBER
My daughter is a very, very bright girl and she has decided herself that she doesn't want to sit, she wants to go to the local school, she wants to go with her friends, she wants to go as part of a community, she does not want to be divided off, she does not want to be separated out, she does not want to be treated as though she is different. She wants a chance to have a decent education in a decent school and she wants the chance for all her friends to have the same thing.

I've taught in comprehensives for 20 years, I've seen good practice and bad practice. I'm not going to try and defend everything that goes on in comprehensive schools - of course not. But I am saying that if Trafford had a comprehensive system it would be one of the best systems in the country because we've got the people to - in the schools to do it.

MADILL
Okay let's take the view of this lady here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I'm a retired teacher, I've taught all age groups from reception to university level. What I'd like to ask Mr Tyler is, if he really believes that selection is possible accurately at 11 in view of the fact that there are always a larger percentage of girls who pass than boys, is he prepared to concede that men, that boys, are less intelligent than girls - because it is a fact that always a larger percentage of girls pass.

And in years gone by before the Equal Opportunities Commission said it was illegal there were two different pass marks - a lower one for boys than girls - and many, many boys who passed in those days and went to the grammar school and did well would fail under the present system because they have to do the same mark.

MADILL
Okay Chris Tyler come back on that point.

TYLER
I think the point is well made. What we need is a fair selection system. To simply throw away the whole point - to throw away a system which is actually producing very good results is not the answer. The answer is to provide a system which is as fair as possible and if there are ways in which we can improve that fairness then fine.

MADILL
Who's next? That gentleman there in the yellow shirt.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
The point that was made about the massive amount of selection that there is in our society I don't think we can disagree with and therefore we should try and remove the one major one that can have a determining effect upon all the other factors of selection.

MADILL
We're going to move on to the next stage. Each side in this debate is allowed to introduce what is known as a special ally. Malcolm Clarke you're against selection and grammar schools who is your special ally?

CLARKE
My special ally is two of the children of Trafford. One is a seven-year-old girl, the other is a 10-year-old boy - 11-year-old boy - who gained a level in his national assessment tests which put him in the top 12% of all boys in the country, who took his 11-plus last year.

BOY
I sat the 11-plus and on the night of the second paper I was ill and I failed the 11-plus by about three marks so which means I'm on borderline. The school recommended me for grammar but they failed me. All my friends from my old school and all the people I used to work with at my old school went to the grammar school and I haven't.

GIRL
I just didn't want my brother to do the 11-plus because they've worked hard all through the years that they've been in the school, so there's not really much point. I think they put a lot of pressure on them that they don't need. My brother was at football and the coach asked: "Do you think you're going to pass your 11-plus?" and my brother said "Yeah" and he said back: "You're not going to pass if you have a kick like that," and started laughing and everyone else started laughing.

BOY
The test has no relevance to what you do at school really. The questions are, well on the non verbal reasoning the tests are about shapes which you do not do anything about in school.

MADILL
So there you have it. Your reaction Elspeth Insch to that.

INSCH
Well I'm sorry that people are engineered at such a young age to speak. However, they point [interruption from audience] - if I could just say to the chairman, when people in the audience can show such splendid intolerance I really need to say nothing. However, if I say - the important thing, I want to go back and make two very quick points to allow other people to have a chance unlike some folks down there. The first is that I do [interruption from audience] ...

MADILL
Hold on let Elspeth make her point please.

INSCH
I think the important thing really is that to go back to the point where the lady cut me off earlier in the thing - those parents did not need to enter any of their children, they could have kept them off school if the children sit it on a school day, where I am they opt in - it's a parental choice, a parental decision. Yes you can keep your child off school. It doesn't matter - of course parents keep their children off school all the time.

The second thing that I would say is that I do believe that schools can offer quite different curricula and I think that that is something that is very valuable and many grammar schools do offer a curriculum that is different from that offered in other schools in their locality.

MADILL
Okay. Now let's move on to the other sides special ally. Who is your special ally Chris Tyler?

TYLER
I'd like to introduce our special ally. We've chosen the head boy of one of our local schools - who better really to speak on behalf of our current system?

HEAD BOY
"If we care anything about the education of our children we should be building grammar schools and banning public schools. But in dumb class ridden Britain where everyone is expected to know their place and stick to it for life naturally we're doing it the other way round." That was Tony Parsons writing for the Mirror earlier this year.

He's just illustrating that the theory of education is often very different from real life as many parents find out to their cost including our prime minister. As a member of a grammar school I feel that central to the entire issue is that grammar schools should try and produce pupils who can challenge anything that is produced from a private school.

For me grammar schools represent the only totally accessible level of academic excellence. With the abolition of grammar school you would take away the aspirations of very intelligent pupils who can't afford to access that private education.

Although we don't have the facilities of the independent schools we have an atmosphere which allows dedicated teachers to fulfil their pupils' aims. For people who are academic but not wealthy there is no other option.

MADILL
Professor Richard Pring - your first thoughts on that Professor Richard Pring.

PRING
Well my first thoughts are that I'm very pleased that he is seeing that the system - the maintained system of education - should be good enough to challenge the - if you like - the dominance of the independent system in many of our ways in this country.

MADILL
But do you think that ...

PRING
Hold on, what I would disagree with is the fact that it actually should only be produced by a grammar school system, this, seems to me, just goes totally against the facts. I have to say as a member of Oxford University I know an enormous number of people highly active in that university as undergraduates who are themselves the product of the comprehensive system. So it isn't really a unique thing.

INSCH
University is stacked up by people who have come from public schools and you're having to actually discriminate in order to get pupils in from comprehensive schools.

PRING
Actually I would now challenge the headmistress to give a shred of evidence that justifies that, I think, quite scandalous remark. It is simply not true, simply not true. I have sat through a whole year on the vice-chancellor's working party about entry to Oxford University and it is simply not true what you have said.

MADILL
If I could quote this, Professor Pring at you, there is a paper by Whitty et al and they say: "Students who go to independent schools are more than twice as likely to go to elite universities as those who go to state schools." And that's from his paper Destined for Success.

PRING
Sorry?

MADILL
He said that - hold on - I'll repeat it again, I'll repeat it again.

PRING
There's no doubt, sorry, there's no doubt about it. There is a distortion, there's a disproportionate number of people who come from the independent school - independent schools - to a place like Oxford. But, of course, that entry reflects the number of people who apply and there's an enormous number - it does, look at the figures...

INSCH
And there's a distortion in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds all the Russell Group, all the best.

PRING
...are there and what - one of the main things that what one needs to do, not just to Oxford or Cambridge but to Bristol, to Exeter, Durham and so on is to encourage more and more people from the comprehensive system to apply to these universities and then you'll get a very different kind of entry to them.

MADILL
Let me bring up this particular statistic which has come from the council. We're asking the question does selection only work for rich kids? In Trafford more than half the kids in rich areas pass the 11-plus and less than 10% of youngsters in poor areas pass. One local councillor has said: "The 11-plus is nothing more than social selection and is giving rise to economic apartheid in our schools." So Chris Tyler how would you answer that?

TYLER
Well I think the point here is well made, I think it's the point I was making right at the beginning of this, there will be differences in schools not to do with academic ability or selection of anything else, there will be differences in schools to do with where they are within areas. That will always happen, I'm afraid that's a fact of life.

What we're going to see now is that when you've got a difference in schools and we've got schools in leafy suburbs who are getting very good pass rates then they're going to be solely populated, if this goes ahead, by people who can afford to move there. So I, who went to a grammar school, would never have gone and all the other people who would not have those opportunities and they are opportunities - let's not kid ourselves there is a difference between different types of schools in different areas and children in poor areas will not get the opportunity to go to leafy suburb schools.

MADILL
A few more points from the floor. This lady here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Yes. If the government actually wants to abolish grammar schools why doesn't it come out and say so. It's effectively passed the buck to parents in the form of this ballot which is so biased and confusing that it fudges the issue. But the wording of the ballot question implies that grammar schools will be open to everyone, it conveniently omits to say that by doing so they will no longer be grammar schools. So you will have what, as Chris just has said, selection by wealth not selection by ability.

MADILL
Could I also bring up the point Professor Pring - is it fair that parents can vote to destroy a grammar school but they can't vote to create a grammar school?

PRING
I think it's quite fair, certainly, because I do think - because I think that actually, well, for the quite simple reason that in the past when there has been these opportunities: Solihull, Milton Keynes, Richmond - the parents all had the opportunity to bring back the grammar school and they all decided that it did not want the grammar school system because they found that the comprehensive system in those places were providing the sort of education for their children right across the boards.

INSCH
Because they're leafier suburbs than Trafford.

PRING
That is one of the biggest mistakes - that was one of the biggest mistakes that the Conservative government did, they assumed if they put it to the vote people would go overwhelming for the grammar school and they didn't and therefore they kept the comprehensive system going in those three areas.

MADILL
The problem is a lot of politicians don't practice what they preach do they? I mean we have a well publicised case of Harriet Harmon for example's sent her son to a grammar school despite Labour Party policy.

PRING
Yes and I sent her a letter about it.

MADILL
Gentleman at the back.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I just want to speak from my own experience. I came from a very working class background and the grammar school which I was able to pass the 11-plus for many years ago enabled me to achieve things which I don't think I would have been able to achieve had I not been able to go to the grammar school.

Now I offer that as a counter to the argument which has been put earlier on that the 11-plus creates an apartheid, it doesn't, it enables people to move, it enables people to achieve things that they may not otherwise be able to achieve and certainly it isn't the case that working class areas - kids from working class areas are unable to pass the 11-plus because I was from a very, very working class area, a very working class family and I passed.

MADILL
Okay this lady here at the front.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
I'm actually an 11-plus refugee. I lived in Trafford and I was fortunate enough to be able to move so that my children didn't have to go through the indignity of the 11-plus. My son, who has just done his GCSEs, has got five A*s, two As and two Bs from his local comprehensive school. Don't tell me that bright kids don't do well in comprehensive schools because they do.

MADILL
Malcolm Clarke we haven't heard from you for a while.

CLARKE
Well we've heard some rather interesting things this evening. We've learnt that Chris doesn't actually support the 11-plus, what he supports is what he calls some kind of fair selective system which he hasn't defined. And he can't define it because children abilities are in a continuous range and there is no way of validly, at the age of 10, separating them out into two groups.

Then we have the head mistress advising parents to keep their children off school on the day of the 11-plus, I don't know whether her colleagues in Trafford would regard that as an authorised absence or an unauthorised absence but what I can tell her is this that it does nothing at all to alter the stigma and the feeling of failure of children as a result of that process.

MADILL
I want to try and move on to what happens when you change a grammar school to a comprehensive school. If I could read this out to you: York went comprehensive in the 1980s and Queen Anne's school was one of the grammar schools which changed its status. The number of pupils halved and it's now being closed. Parents say it went rapidly downhill because of a lack of parental support. Is there any connection?

Also the cost of the change. Few of the authorities who may have to make this change from grammar school have actually costed it, however Kent County Council which has 33 grammar schools has and estimates that this will cost �150m - is that money worth being spent - is that money well spent on changing a grammar school to a comprehensive school?

These are the sorts of points I would like to cover in this particular section. Anybody with a view on that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER
You'd just mentioned a cost - was it Kent education? - you said �150m.

MADILL
To move 33 grammar schools to comprehensive schools.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
As a parent of a Trafford pupil if the department of education aren't going to pay for this and the local council aren't going to pay for it, surely that means council taxes are going to go up otherwise if council taxes don't go up we're going to have less resources and less teachers.

MADILL
And this lady here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
That's a very interesting argument. I mean personally I did actually go to a grammar school in a Tory controlled education authority which went comprehensive whilst I was at the school so that by the time I came to take my O-levels it was a comprehensive school. And I have to say that it reunited me with my best friend who I'd lost at the age of 11, so I do have a personal insight.

But I should say as deputy leader of the council here that the council does have a very clear plan for what would happen in the event of parents voting to end the 11-plus and that's what the vote is about ending the 11-plus not about closing grammar schools.

Trafford is in the fortunate position that we have growing numbers of secondary education children and therefore there is no question of any secondary school in the borough closing. What there is the question of is how do we address the fact that so few of our 16 year olds go on to A-level by comparison with surrounding authorities? And part of the reason for that is that if you're at a grammar school your grammar school has a six form, if you're at a high school you have to apply to the grammar school sixth form to permit you to enter it.

Now you can see just in that argument alone that in a modern education system where the distinction between O-levels and CSEs has gone, where the question of encouraging more pupils to take A-levels is on the increase in order to expand higher education numbers clearly there is not alternative but that there has to be proper investment in education, post 16, in Trafford whatever happens but ending the 11-plus and removing the artificial distinction which it induces would be the single most positive contribution that could be made towards it. And I think whatever that costs is a valid investment in the education of our children.

MADILL
One more view from the floor?

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Yes I too went to a grammar city in inner city Salford which changed into a comprehensive school in my third year. I as a child noticed absolutely no change whatever in the quality of teaching that I got, I went through the sixth form, I went through to university and I teach in a university having taken a doctorate.

The point I would make however, I was amazed when I moved to Trafford that the winds of change hadn't blown through this particular area and the latest educational research which I am familiar with quite conclusively proves that a grammar school system depresses results across the whole area - it is a simple statistical fact.

MADILL
Could I also quote back at you John Marks from the Social Market Foundation: "In Buckinghamshire the existence of many grammar schools did not hold back secondary moderns who did better than secondary moderns nationwide."

Let me move to Professor Richard Pring. I wanted to ask you just one final question before we sum up and vote and that is this: do you think that if grammar schools were to close a lot of the parents of children at grammar schools would then turn to private schools rather than comprehensive schools?

PRING
Well I think that depends very much upon the quality of the comprehensive schools. And I think that what we've heard tonight is lots of stories about - and I can reiterate these all around the schools that I work with, our department works with 25 comprehensive schools - and I can reiterate: where there are good comprehensive schools that's where people will send their children.

May I just say that on the question about Buckingham, of course what's very interesting about Buckinghamshire is the flow of parents sending their children to the good comprehensive schools in Oxfordshire rather than actually have their children doing the 11-plus.

I think there was a particular thing on cost and I think we've got to say this, don't forget the unit costs are much the same, are the same really whether you go [interruption] - yes exactly, the unit costs are the same whether it be at a grammar school or indeed at a secondary modern school. Although I have to say that was not the case in the heyday of the grammar school, people going back to the glorious days of the grammar school these were schools where those children who went there got far more resources - per capita resources - than the other people who had failed the 11-plus. But if you want to know this ...

INSCH
That's history.

PRING
... the BBC telephone survey on the 22 January 1999 found that two thirds of the LEAs found no authority predicting increased costs if there was a change to the comprehensive system - that's the survey there - and therefore there will of course be some costs, they're not the ones exaggerated by Kent County Council.

AUDIENCE MEMBER
So we're going to generate about 17 sixth forms out of mid air in Trafford with no funding from the DfE?

PRING
There are many, many different ways of implementing the comprehensive system post 16 and therefore there are ways in which that doesn't have to be a cost. And in fact it will be a cost for the very reason given - in a comprehensive system you have far more people staying on post 16, perhaps that is not what you want in Trafford.

MADILL
Alright, the talking time is over, thank you very much indeed, we'll take a vote on this. We'll take your vote now...

And here is the result in South Manchester tonight: 69 people agree that good education is selective education and 72 disagree. It's very, very close, we'll see if the listeners at home reach the same conclusion but from them and us, here in Manchester, goodbye.