In 1996, David Blunkett made his historic pledge: “No more selection under a Labour Government”. Since then, grammar school ballots have been rigged in favour of the status quo. Labour has fostered the delusion of parental choice and developed secondary admissions systems that are breeding grounds of parental cynicism.

There are few issues which more strongly unite Labour MP’s – and party members – than support for comprehensive education. The overwhelming majority of Labour Party members and Labour MP’s send their children to comprehensive schools. For the first time in history, Britain has a Prime Minister whose children are in comprehensive schools. Why, then, are we so schizophrenic about selection?

We have, allegedly, “developed a mature understanding of the benefits of a diverse system” as a pretext for pumping millions of pounds into state grammar schools and quasi-selective ‘specialist schools’. We continue to pretend that there is no link between the number of schools in “challenging circumstances” and the widening differentials in pupil achievement, and the multi-layered selective systems we have endorsed.

And yet the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills refer repeatedly to the ‘bad old days’ of the 11-plus. They are explicit in their opposition to the creation of any new grammar schools.

They are passionate in the commitment to equality of educational opportunity and the need to develop the potential of each individual child. They have delivered new investment to schools on an unprecedented scale.

The danger is that the Government’s magnificent intentions and its outstanding success in reforming pre-school and primary education will fail to achieve the great leap forward in secondary education because we have failed to cast off the social prejudices and educational mythology of a bygone era.

Labour has been guilty of misguided political cowardice in failing to confront the arrogance of the (surprisingly small) pro-selection lobby. We have been guilty of indefensible political cowardice by acquiescing in the assumptions of a (rapidly aging) conservative establishment. Rather than build policy on the basis of evidence, the Government has chosen to conduct the debate on the transformation of secondary education through soundbites and simplistic rhetoric.

These are the facts. Comprehensive schools and comprehensive have been directly responsible for the remarkable increase in the achievement of pupils in secondary schools over the past 30 years, and a tripling of the participation rate in higher education.

Comprehensive educational systems regularly outperform selective ones in Britain and internationally. In England, comprehensive schools deliver better results even for the most academically able band of students than selective schools.

Most of Britain has rejected selection at 11 precisely because parents and politicians alike understand that children develop at different stages and neither aptitudes nor abilities can be precisely assessed at such a young age.

‘Comprehensive’ and ‘selective’ are mutually exclusive terms. Some inner city schools struggle precisely because they are not – and never have been – truly comprehensive.

Segregation in secondary education is inextricably linked to segregation in social structure. This was as self evident in apartheid South Africa as it is in riot-torn Oldham or Bradford or class-ridden Kent or Buckinghamshire.

The vast majority of children in Britain attend genuine comprehensive schools. In most parts of England, Scotland and Wales, local networks of comprehensive schools, staffed by dedicated teachers, have delivered annual improvements in pupil performance for many years.

This stability and coherence is now being dismantled in the headlong rush for diversity as each school joins the race to achieve specialist school status.

Diversity of school type is seen as the key to raising standards in secondary schools. Why, then, is there so much revolution for so little gain? And where is the evidence that diversity of institutions automatically delivers improvements in performance?

The Schools White Paper of 2001 quoted a single piece of research citing improved GCSE performance by specialist schools. It concealed the fact that this research had been commissioned by the Technology Colleges’ Trust, the main lobby group for diversity, and that its validity had been immediately challenged by other experts in the field.

Further studies by the National Foundation for Educational Research detected marginal difference between the performance of specialist (or faith) schools and traditional comprehensives. In June this year, the Office of National Statistics published the most comprehensive study or performance by school type ever completed. No evidence was found to suggest that diversity led automatically to enhanced achievement.

Some may ask why the diversity policy – the most radical change of direction in educational policy for 30 years – was adopted in advance of the publication of the most authoritative and detailed analysis of the performance of different school types that Britain has ever seen.

There is no doubt that pupil performance will increase in the next three years. The Key Stage3 Strategy, the 14-19 Policy, the reforms to teachers’ working practices, and huge new investment will deliver results. The Government deserves enormous credit for this ambitious programme.

The question is, however, how much more could have been gained and what dangers could have been avoided had we chosen to build on proven success rather than take a great leap backwards.

This article was published in Tribune in October 2002, and is based on David’s foreword to ‘Selection isn’t working: diversity, standards and inequality in secondary education’ by Tony Edwards and Sally Tomlinson.