I SUPPOSE if I was given a blank sheet of paper and absolute power and told to go away into a very quiet place and design a completely new secondary school system for Buckinghamshire, I might very well come up with a range of comprehensive schools and tell all parents they had to send their children to the one in their neighbourhood.

It would be a level playing field, where all the children in all the schools would be able to perform to the best of their ability.

But starting from scratch is not an option.

First, I would have to work with the schools that already existed in the positions where they were, unless I had a bottomless purse. And second, I am not in favour of absolute power and telling parents where to send their children to school. I think it is up to them to do what they think is best, whether for their children or for some greater social good.

So if we change all the upper and grammar schools in Buckinghamshire to comprehensives, but retain parents' right to say which school they would like their children to go to, what would be likely to happen?

Schools are not all situated in uniform social areas, with a nice happy mix of well-off and less well-off families.

Even if at first everyone sent their children to their local school which they wouldn't because lots would plump for the former grammar schools exam results would almost certainly be better in the ones in the better-off areas, that had a preponderantly middle-class range of parents.

Then before you knew it it parents would be looking at Ofsted reports and exam results and exercising their right to choose schools that were doing better.

You could get a system where inner city comprehensives were deprived of their brightest children. Schools in places like Great Missenden, Marlow, Wendover and Waddesdon would pick a lot of them up.

They would become quasi-grammar schools and the inner town schools would suffer.

Perhaps this sounds familiar. We already get these problems under selective education. So why change everything if everything is going to be the same?

Another thing is that really well-off parents, many of whom move into Bucks to get their children into state grammar schools and save themselves thousands of pounds a year in private school fees would not look at the comprehensives.

They would cough up the cash for private education. The fact that there are only two private secondary schools in the county, shows how much grammar schools are valued

You may say good riddance to these parents. But their loss is also increasing segregation, not helping to do away with it. And as headteachers have told me many of these parents are extremely active in school life and their input is welcomed.

Finally there is the cost. How much will it cost to replace our grammar schools and upper schools with comprehensives? Existing schools are not where they should be for a comprehensive system and a rebuilding programme would be massively expensive.

I can't see the Government putting mega bucks into Bucks to rebuild schools. And even if they did many people would say the money would be better spent on improving life for the existing schools, especially the upper schools.

So on practical grounds I can't see change happening here.

By Bucks Free Press political editor Margaret Smith

January 24, 2003 14:30