There was a lot, for me at least, to like in the various headline policies from the UKIP election manifesto. Controlling our own borders, getting away from the corrupt and sclerotic EU, repealing the Climate Change Act, cracking down on health tourism etc. However there was one policy that made me cheer loudly and that was the promise to return to some form of tripartite education system where children are allocated to schools based on their ability or aptitude. For far too long the educational establishment has created and then presided over a crumbling, inefficient, degraded and diminished education system. It seems as if the sort of ‘equality’ that the educationalists have spawned is one where every child has an equal chance of getting badly served.

All children are different. Some are academic, some are not. Some children seem to be able to apply themselves to practical problem-solving whereas there are some children who if you gave them a problem-solving task, they would be completely lost. Some children are creative and have an aptitude for building things, whether by traditional means or via computer code. It was madness for the educational establishment to think that all children of all abilities could be taught effectively and efficiently in the same schools, and the experiment of ‘mixed ability’ classes has been shown to be an utter disaster.

Even when children are tiny, they have different abilities and temperaments. As the main daytime carer for my child, the reason I am able to write this is because 3 month old ‘Laughing Boy’ is quite happy lying in his recliner, playing with his toys and listening to me clacking away at the keyboard and only gets upset when he needs feeding, changing, or when Ed Miliband speaks on the TV. Other children of the same age are different in personality, and some would not be at all happy doing this, and would need to be constantly held or entertained or otherwise diverted. Children are born with different personalities, and as they grow they show different abilities and aptitudes, and although this was noticed by those who framed the 1944 Education Act, it is a common sense view that has been thrown out of the window by educationalists, teachers and academics.

I was going to vote UKIP anyway, because the Lib Lab Con alternative are a very mad, bad and dangerous to vote for bunch, despite my reservations that UKIP are not being strong enough on the issue of countering Bearded Savagery. This promise to bring back selective education is the one that should make many more people move their vote towards UKIP. I support the reintroduction of educational selection not because I feel that I’ve been cheated of a Grammar School place that I should have had, because most definitely I would have failed my 11 Plus exam, but because I’ve experienced the failure of mixed ability schools. My secondary school saw the academic children bullied, to such an extent that only those who had really supportive parents or great strength of personal character, didn’t crumble and join the large band of kids who just buggered about. The school I attended also failed the children of middling ability and failed the children of lesser ability. I’ve lived the comprehensive school future, and it stinks.

What makes the current situation worse, is that reading about education, and its recent history, and talking to other parents, makes me think that things have not really improved, and that innovations such as Ofsted, and the National Curriculum etc, have really only been exercises in moving the deckchairs on the Titanic. These changes, positive as they’ve been in some cases, haven’t changed the educational culture nor tackled the core problems. Until society recognises that not all children are practical or academic or sporty and allocates children to the sort of school that best fits the child, then things will not improve. We will continue to see politically bent, content-free history lessons, dumbed down exams, maths curricula which are unworthy of the name, children leaving primary school unable to read and children damaged by not having their failures pointed out or their successes praised.

Whether children are selected at 8 or 11 or 13 or 14, or if we need a flexible system that takes into account different developmental rates, are details that could be worked out at a later date, but select we must. The comprehensive system has failed, and its failure has created greater educational inequality. Selection on ability or aptitude is fairer all round than the current situation, where richer parents either opt out of the state system altogether, or use their resources to move to areas where there are good state schools, or pretend to be Christians so that they can gain access to the better quality church schools.

Those who created the comprehensive system probably thought they were doing good, and probably genuinely did think that they were providing ‘grammar schools for all’, but the educationalists and the system and the comprehensive schools they created, have failed this country and its children dismally. Comprehensive schools have failed in their sacred duty as educational establishments, to pass on the best of past knowledge to the next generation and surely now it is time for a change?

In Britain we have had over fifty years of having the educational progressives running things and the results have not been pretty. Too many children leave school with lots of worthless certificates but sod all when it comes to the building blocks of knowledge that are necessary to achieve in later life. Dumping the failing comprehensive system and sending children to the most appropriate school is probably the best way of starting to undo the damage that has already been done. It will take decades to clean up the mess that those who advocate child-centred, progressive education policies have made. We must grieve for those whose education was ruined by the fools who imposed the comprehensive system upon us. We cannot wholly undo the damage that has been done to individuals in the past (although I would welcome an expansion of both free and paid for adult education for those who are eager to put right the wrongs that were done to them) but we must as a matter of priority, make sure that our children’s future isn’t blighted by the sort of educational idiocy that blighted many of our lives in the past.