I’ve always felt ambiguous about the 11-plus. I passed well, and went off as a ‘scholarship boy’ to board at a direct-grant (now independent) school.

I found the yo-yoing between my council maisonette home and the middle-class school difficult to handle at first. I managed to survive. There were some fantastic teachers. I made lifelong friends. I owe the school a lot.

But, as I recall, we were the only family on our estate who did pass the exam. All the other children went off to the local secondary modern schools. Most left at 15 with few, if any, qualifications. They were in many ways the casualties of the selective system.

Our own children went to a large, very mixed comprehensive school in London. I chaired its Governors. We had some serious problems. The school’s leadership had to be changed. But my children did fine — better than me in their public examinations.

The move, in the sixties and seventies, to end the 11-plus in most areas could have been handled much better than it was. Insufficient controls on standards, and teacher quality, were put in place. But with 25 years of reform by both parties there has been a sea-change in the culture and performance of our comprehensive schools. A friend recently reminded me that when his school had been a grammar it sent no one to Oxbridge in years. That changed only after it had gone comprehensive.

There are still some very good grammar schools. Clitheroe is one. The question, though, is whether we need more.

The chief schools’ inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, says “no”. Only a tiny percentage (three per cent) of pupils come from low-income backgrounds — “a nonsense”, he says. Northern Ireland’s selective system does worse than England in international league tables.

Whether I would have done equally well in a comprehensive school is an impossible question to answer. Overall, however, the current system provides more opportunities for more pupils than ever did the selective system of the 1950s. Sir Michael is right. We should not put the clock back.