THERE is something of a fudge about the government's plans that might restore grammar schools in every large town.

Nonetheless, with this scheme, it may beat Labour for the parents' votes on education.

The fudge, of course, is that it is bringing back the grammars without blanket restoration of the 11-plus examination.

The return of the grammars would be popular as, 30 years after most were killed off, they are still much-mourned as centres of excellence that all children once had the opportunity of experiencing.

But the 11-plus was far less popular.

That was because most children did not pass and were branded as failures at an early age.

Hence the reason for the fudge.

So, instead, selectivity will be in the hands of those secondary schools whose heads and governors opt to choose their pupils on ability - a lower-key 11-plus, then, for which ambitious parents will have to volunteer their children. Will they?

Of course they will.

And in droves.

For look at the demand for places at the few remaining grammars and the independent schools operating the government's assisted-places scheme on fees.

This proves that centres of excellence, embodied by the grammar school system, are wanted and the government has no need to apologise for them or their results.

And indeed the stimulus that their restoration will bring for better standards in the primary sector goes without saying.

And that, surely, is much more potent than Labour's plans to improve the comprehensives - whose failures they now admit - from within by so-called fast-tracking and internal forms of selection.

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