MICHAEL GOVE, the Education Secretary, says too many children go to public school. There is a good reason for this: state education is so very poor.

Over breakfast I read a letter in the paper from 26 schoolchildren complaining about the bog standard GCSE course and examination: “The syllabus does not encourage us to think for ourselves... in modern languages, we are told all the questions we will be asked in advance... we are taught to be textbook dependent...”

Those are not the opinions of educational “experts” but of children who know what they are talking about, being at the actual chalk face, so to speak. The shape of the educational landscape in Britain is easy to discern.

The first fact is that some people are better off than others. Whether we like it or not, this has always been the case, and it always will be. And parents want the best for their children. Naturally those who can afford it will send them to the best schools.

The present shambles in education began with the abolition of the grammar school. I remember Anthony Crosland’s disgraceful statement in 1965 when he was Education Secretary: “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every f****** grammar school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

Now why should an Education Secretary, of all people, want to do a thing like that? The politics of envy, that’s why. And the numb skull obsession with “equality”. People are not equal. Oddly enough, it’s all right to say this when you’re talking about how fast people can run, or that some can play the violin and others are tone deaf. It’s OK to say that players at Newcastle United are rather better than those who play for a lowly team in League Two. Absurdly we’re not allowed to say that some children are brighter than others and so they require a different education.

We can’t simply put the folly of abolishing grammar schools down to the fact that Crosland, Shirley Williams and their colleagues in government were socialists. Margaret Thatcher closed more grammar schools than anyone else. It was a mistake.

And it was cruel. It took away from bright but poor children their best chance of improving their life chances. And it will not do to say that the majority who didn’t make it to grammar school were left on the scrapheap: for it is simply a fact of life that those who are intellectually and academically disposed are in a minority. This means, among other things, that you do a more practically adept child no favours by sending him to a school for which he is not suited, where he will be miserable.

The 1944 Education Act which provided for grammar schools, technical schools and secondary moderns was not the disaster that every politician now says it was. The failure was that those in charge of this system made a bad job of it. Let’s say the grammar schools were for those good at Latin, pure maths and literature, the technical schools were meant to cater for those interested in engineering and other technical subjects, and the modern schools were meant to provide a grounding in the basics, enabling suitable children to go on to take up one of the many worthwhile trade apprenticeships then widely available.

This system reflected the natural differences in aptitude existing throughout society.

It didn’t mean that some children were “better” and others “worse”. Difference – that’s the key. Why can’t politicians get this into their ideologically fuddled heads?