Melissa Benn is a journalist, novelist and campaigner. Her most recent book is School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education. In it she analyses the Coalition government’s attempts to revolutionise the British school system through a privatising agenda, the troubled history of education reform that has led us to this point, and outlines a vision for a revitalised system of comprehensive education.

She discussed these themes with NLP’s Ed Lewis, himself a teacher in a secondary comprehensive school. 

You open your book with a discussion of the Coalition government's 'new schools revolution'. People will no doubt be aware that the government is reforming education with zeal, but may not see anything unusual here - under previous governments the educational landscape has changed continually, and New Labour in particular were especially energetic when it came to education policy. So, if we really are witnessing a revolution, what is being overthrown, and what is being set up in its place?

Something new is happening that makes New Labour look positively cautious if not sluggish!

Firstly, there’s the scale and speed of change. Not for nothing has this government been called the ‘breakneck’ Coalition. It was obvious that from the moment the Tories came in, they were determined to press ahead with radical changes in education - as in health, welfare and so on. Some of us warned as far back as 2006, when Blair pushed the Education and Inspections Act through a reluctant Parliament, that a future Tory government might use the framework laid down to push through a revolution. That’s exactly what has happened. Gove and co have taken Labour’s city academy policy in an entirely new direction with the establishment of ‘converter’ academies - largely situated in affluent and leafy areas - as well as the controversial free schools.

Put crudely,  there is a clear determination to privatise the whole system, to pass it over to largely unaccountable charitable, third sector and private companies, with profit making companies coming in further down the line, perhaps if the Tories win a clear majority at the next election and can cut loose of the Liberal Democrats.

Secondly, there’s something new - and very dangerous - in the rhetoric around education. These changes are being implemented in the name of poorer children and the advancement of social justice. It’s an apparently seductive and powerful argument. Dig beneath the surface and it’s so much more complicated than that. My feeling is that Michael Gove is largely concerned with academically talented poorer children who might in the past have got a place at a grammar school or an assisted place at a private school (even though it is fairly clear that most of both kinds of places went to the already educationally advantaged.)  Such children can be perfectly well catered for in a well resourced comprehensive system combined with a government that genuinely persuades universities to take appropriate measures to promote the interests of less well off pupils.

Instead, the government is breaking up the entire framework of the state education system. As Andy Burnham, former shadow minister for schools rightly said:  this is not a plan for all children.

Thirdly, there’s a profound shift in emphasis on the content and delivery of education. We await the outcome of the curriculum review, but all the indications point to a new emphasis on rote learning of facts over the deeper development of skills and capabilities. Certainly, synthetic phonics will win out in the reading wars whereas most experts argue that you need a mix of approaches. Some of the more draconian ideas of the American charter school model are already being implemented in some of our schools. All this means, yet again, tight control and top down centralisation particularly for poorer schools and children with autonomy and diversity and a richer curriculum for the more affluent.

In short, then, we are seeing the rapid transformation of a state education system that certainly needed continuing improvement, and greater measures of fairness,  into a state funded system that will let the market shape provision in all sorts of worrying ways.

One aspect of the school system that you discuss is selection. Much was made of Cameron's row with his party over his opposition to grammar schools. Yet school selection of pupils remains powerfully entrenched in much secondary education – not least due to enduring impact of the grammars. Will selection penetrate the system more deeply with the 'new schools revolution' and, if so, what are the implications of this?

Yes, we will see new types of selection creep into a system that is already confusingly multi-tiered. At present, private schools select by parental wealth and by academic tests of varying levels of stringency; grammar schools use the eleven plus, meaning most children at grammars are now the children of wealthier families who can tutor their children for the test; and faith schools use the ‘attendance at church’ test, and variants on those sorts of criteria, which tends to favour the middle class.

Add to this the new niches coming into the state system: the minority faiths who are bidding for parity with the Anglican and Catholic schools; the converting grammar schools who can continue to select; the converting private schools that will no doubt continue to educate the better off; the powerful parent groups who are setting up schools in their own affluent areas, using the freedoms over admissions granted them by academy/free school status. It always annoys me when the ‘new school evangelists’ talk about all-ability schooling as if this runs through the whole system. It’s a con. We have a deeply divided system that is about to become great deal more divided.

A post script to that: I have noticed a new strand of criticism of David Willett’s seminal speech in 2007 - that repudiated grammars as the means to promote social mobility for the poor - creeping into the new educational right’s argument. Free schooler Toby Young indirectly attacked the speech the other day. It makes me wonder if the Tories are softening up public opinion for an expansion of academic selection within the system at some future date. Quite frankly, by then, the landscape will be so complex and confusing, only the keenest education watchers will notice!

Your book sets out to defend the idea of comprehensive education. This core of this notion is very simple, but it is worth re-stating: what is comprehensive education and why is it desirable?

We have to distinguish between the comprehensive principle and its implementation - or lack thereof. The comprehensive principle asserts/assumes that we shouldn’t divide our children before puberty on the grounds of their so-called intellectual ability. Not only does such a crude division restrict educational development, it tends to reaffirm class assumptions and prejudice. But comprehensive schooling also rests on a positive credo, one that aims to develop the interests, skills and talents of all children, regardless of social background. It also acts as an important symbol of the genuine Big Society.

I would argue that the comprehensive principle has been vindicated. Indeed, it has triumphed. When was the last time you heard a politician or major public figure argue for the return of the secondary moderns?

What we cannot agree on is a system that honours these original founding principles. In part, it’s down to residential segregation in our big cities and towns which means the intake, resources and results of a local school will differ dramatically according to post code. We could begin to solve this fairly easily - through fairer admissions systems and the targetting of resources at poorer neighbourhoods - were it not for another unspoken but powerful assumption within our education system: that the middle class should always be granted a more privileged education within the state framework. See below for more on this.

The widespread introduction of comprehensive schooling and the concurrent phasing out of the grammar-secondary modern system marked a significant step forward for educational equality, removing the invidious distinction between those who passed the eleven plus. Despite these strengths, it wasn’t long before comprehensive education began to be chipped away at by a variety of government measures. What were the reasons for the vulnerability of the comprehensive system? Ultimately, is it that it reflects too strong a challenge to class privilege?

Governments have long been in a muddle concerning the merits of genuinely comprehensive provision versus the rights and special privileges of the middle class within state education. There’s no doubt that the real problems are thrown up by socially mixed by socially mixed schooling when you have children coming through the door in such different states of readiness to learn and with huge variations in what you could call cultural capital. You might have a child whose parents have just arrived in this country and who cannot speak a word of English sitting next to a child who, at six years old, has the reading power of your average fifteen year old. Historically, governments have tended to pander to the most articulate and settled populations.

However, what is clear is that most of the best performing international school systems do no select their children, or force specialisation on them, at a young age.

The Coalition and their allies pay lip service, on a national level, to all-ability, socially mixed schools, yet in practice government changes have both confirmed and introduced myriad forms of selective practices that, to put it crudely, allow middle class parents to find ‘safe’ and successful schools for themselves. The controversial Bristol Free School, opened this Autumn, was allowed to draw up its own catchment area – in accordance with the free school/academy model – thus determining its own intake from within a largely affluent area.

Such developments mean that one of the biggest problems of our system, that poorer children are concentrated in schools that educate other poorer children, remain untouched. The new government approach to this is not to improve local authority provision but to put many of these formerly struggling schools under the control of the new educational chains. The more efficient of these chains are indeed pushing up results for their school populations, using many of the methods of the Charter and KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools of the US: teaching to the test, emphasising depth not breadth. The question we need to ask is: does this mean that the best of these schools are now functioning as highly efficient de facto secondary moderns? What kind of general education are they providing?

Is the role of the left and the unions simply to fight a defensive battle over British education, seeking a return to a 1970s-style system oriented around comprehensives and local democracy? If not, what new elements can guide a progressive vision of education?

To me, the comprehensive principle is more important than ever for a mixed, multi cultural modern society. In some ways developments of recent years and the adaptation of the right to this same principle shows our victory.

Having said that, it is vitally important that we fight the current campaigns not old battles. The landscape is constantly evolving; to keep relevant, we need to keep abreast of policy and political ‘mood’ changes and take all that on in the here and now.

At the same time, there is an important job to be done in terms of re-thinking how a modern, democratically accountable, comprehensive system might work with an enriched curriculum as well as fair principles of operation. I lay out some practical ideas as well as guiding principles for this at various points in my book.

Just to take one example; I think it important that we don’t give up the idea of the role of creativity and experimentation in our pedagogic approach. I am an avid reader, lover of music, art, film and drama. So much of my understanding of the world is shaped through my appreciation of these art forms; they are at the heart of what I consider a good education, the kind of education I want for my daughters - and for all children. We don’t have to have all the technical answers - but we do have to possess a vision about where ‘our’ schools would take the young people of today. We have to be both realistic and to inspire, even when in opposition.

You also argue that we need to make the school system more democratically accountable at the local level. Maurice Glasman has argued in favour of a system in which a third of the power in every school is given to the parents, a third to the staff and a third to the funders (be it central or local government). Would you support this kind of change? If not, how would like to see stronger local democracy realised?

I am coming late to the arguments of Blue Labour and am still considering their wider implications. But the idea is interesting as it promotes something that is fast disappearing from our system - or the privatised parts of it: the idea of meaningful democratic accountability. The Coalition is fervently promoting, with the help of a right wing press, the idea of top down academies and free schools as the only answer to our educational difficulties. They have officially 'disappeared' the local authority comprehensives that often perform very well and still retain some measure of meaningful accountability.

Meanwhile, as I point out above, the academy/ free school model appears to honour the comprehensive ideal by promoting all ability schools for those not already selected out within the system. However, I suspect that many of the academies/free schools will roughly divide into schools that largely serve poor, black and other ethnic minority children and the more affluent converter academies that currently take only 10% of children on free school meals, on average. Also, on current performance - with their accounts often not available for public scrutiny - they certainly suffer from a democratic 'deficit.'

So, yes, we need new models of local schooling that promote efficiency and fairness and genuine transparency and accountability. I would like to be part of a genuine public conversation on this issue.

How do you think the role of the teacher could be transformed in a more progressive system, and how would that differ from the current trajectory that teaching is on?

Clearly, the professional lives of teachers, controlled for decades by interfering governments, could be transformed and enriched by being given more genuine freedom. This would require more minimal/less prescriptive national curriculum - less top down interference in day to day teaching; less testing but more individual, pupil based assessment; smaller classes; more classroom and school based support (for behavioural problems/dealing with difficult parents, neither of which should really be the concern of a teacher); and most importantly of all, more freedom to create and deliver lessons tailored to a particular class and an ever changing group of young human beings.

Lastly – the democratic, egalitarian and community-oriented system that you support is clearly radically undermined by the prevalence of private schools. Whilst you discuss this in some depth, you nonetheless write that the 'political and moral argument [has] moved beyond angry calls for abolition'. It may be true that the demand for the abolition of private schools is virtually invisible in the mainstream today, but aren't the reasons in favour of such a move as strong as they ever were?

Yes, the arguments are as strong as ever. However, if you seriously tried to abolish private schools you would immediately become enmeshed in a battle over the freedom of the individual to purchase education just as they purchase any other kind of goods. The anti private school lobby would be characterised, indeed assassinated, as the enemy of freedom. Inevitably, massive and entrenched vested interests would be mobilised in such a battle - from the private schools themselves to the media to the current government. Currently, all these take the line that state schools have something to learn from the private sector and that under the principle of ' noblesse oblige' private schools have a duty to help their poorer cousins. I thought Michael Gove's speech at Tory Party Conference this year was very interesting in the way it employed the story of The Good Samaritan; the idea of the party of the affluent, bending down to help the poor and unfortunate, ruined by egalitarianism, mediocrity and socialism.

At the same time, some counter intuitive part of me thinks that only the right/Tories could phase out private education. There are parallels here with the post war situation where the weakness of the private schools through the 1930s and early 1940s offered a once in a century opportunity for the Coalition government, led by Churchill, to bring them in under the state's wing via the 1944 Education Act. That they didn't remains a great lost opportunity.

In his 2011 Conference speech David Cameron talked of breaking down the educational apartheid between private and state education. Some of the most powerful players in the new right educational revolution - such as Anthony Seldon and Toby Young - take this apparently 'more in sorrow than anger' approach to entrenched educational privilege. The current economic crisis is playing into this scenario as increasing numbers of middle England find private education an impossible or unacceptable expense. The Coalition would like to be able to offer such parents a private school style education within the state sector.

If the economic crisis - and parental anger, especially of the middle class variety – deepens, I could imagine the following scenario unfolding: the growth of academies and free schools under private control, offering increasing numbers of parents who had previously gone private state education of a kind that was acceptable to them: lots of Latin, stringed instruments, Pope, Dryden and narrative establishment history. Look at how many private schools are coming in under the free school umbrella already; this will only grow.

At the same time, such a scenario will offer increased economic opportunity to new providers: it is clear that the Coalition is offering up the public sector to business, as I discuss in the book.  The new educational right will argue, as someone like Toby Young does already, that all these changes are bridging the historic gap between private and state and is inherently progressive while also bringing greater rigour into the state system for more children to enjoy, etc.

I lay out this scenario as a possibility. Clearly, it would establish a state system of very different character from the model that I, and many others, would like to see. It would also leave untouched the 'real' and powerful private schools that have recently indicated that they don't like all this talk about apartheid or the sense of being criticised or drawn into the state sector's problems. (At the same time, a leading private school head talks about educational apartheid in our cities as if private edcuation has nothing to do with it!) So there would be - will be - a limit to this development.

As I suggest, all this is very different from a genuine comprehensive model. This would draw on: a devolved and more genuinely democratic state, to ensure genuine fairness in funding and admissions etc, at the local level; a different, richer tradition of pedagogy; and, ideally, teachers and pupils given more genuine autonomy at the classroom level.

For the moment though, I would advocate some specific if relatively small kinds of redistribution, such as the abolition of charitable status, with its estimated worth of a hundred million, and the reinvestment of that amount into state sixth forms who had a hundred and twenty million shaved from their budgets over the last year.