ARE the government's proposals to give schools greater freedom to select more of their pupils the beginning of the end for comprehensive education?

True, the death-knell for the "all-in" system is hardly being sounded out loud as Education Secretary Gillian Shephard moves to allow schools to increase the proportion of pupils admitted on the strength of their ability or aptitude from 10 to 15 per cent.

But this moderate shift could cloak the rebirth of the almost-vanished 11-plus examination and the return of the grammar school.

That is because the results of national tests for 11-year-olds will immediately have an extra importance.

Secondary-level schools eager to attract high-grade pupils and boost or maintain their own standing in the schools' performance league will find it easier to find the brightest.

There is also the suggestion that Mrs Shephard may relax the guidelines restricting the use of interviews of parents in the selection process, which is currently only allowed in church schools.

As a result, virtually by stealth, there may be a come-back for the middle-class-based grammar-type school in all of this.

Labour and the teaching unions have already condemned such opportunities for what they call "social selection" - something which, as we have seen in East Lancashire, has already raised its head in cases where, by virtue of parental choice, certain oversubscribed schools, with any eye on the league tables, have tended to favour children from the supposedly better-motivated middle classes.

However, though this may work against the high-minded egalitarian ethics of the mixed-ability comprehensive system, the upshot may not be all bad.

To begin with, it will put healthy pressure on the primary schools to do better.

And the need is evidently great - especially when one recalls the report last year by Chris Wood, the chief inspector of schools, calling for 7,000 incompetent primary teachers to be sacked and test results showing that a quarter of seven-year-olds could barely read.

Secondly, the creaming-off of the most able pupils might not only please those who see nothing wrong in encouraging excellence, but might also actually advantage the less able.

That is because, even in the current mixed-ability system, teachers have a tendency to concentrate more on the most-responsive pupils - an instinct now encouraged by league-table pressures - to the disadvantage of the slower learners in each class.

But if the "cream" is removed, the remainder then have more teacher time and attention devoted to them.

Finally, those who champion the comprehensive system have little to show in the way of success, despite a whole generation having been exposed to its purported benefits.

Report after report has shown how education standards have fallen as selectivity has declined.

And last week's disclosure by Sir Geoffrey Holland, former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education, proves how sharp the decline has become - when 13-year-olds in English schools lag two whole years behind their counterparts on the continent and, worse, never catch up.

If, then, the stimulus of selectivity may halt that slide, one wonders why its increase is being proposed with such caution.

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