Apparently grammar schools are rather more efficient at doing something many insist is highly desirable. That would seem to be a point in favour of grammar schools but that’s not how it’s going to play out, quite obviously. Non-comprehensive education is a thing of the very Devil to all too many. Therefore some reason will be - will have to be - found to explain to us all why this isn’t a good idea:

Grammar schools are sending more black and minority ethnic (BME) students to Cambridge University than all the other state schools in the country combined, a new analysis reveals.

Children from the most disadvantaged 20 per cent of households are more than twice as likely to get a place at Oxford or Cambridge if they live in an area with grammar schools, according to the report.

The paper, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), examines the impact of selective schooling on state educated pupils’ progression to top universities.

Iain Mansfield, a former senior civil servant who wrote the report, said the figures are a "shocking indictment" on the country's 1,849 comprehensive schools.

His analysis found that BME pupils are more than five times as likely to progress to Oxford or Cambridge if they live in a selective area rather than a non-selective area. Other data shows that more than a third (39 per cent) of pupils in grammar school areas progress to prestigious universities, compared to just 23 per cent in comprehensive areas.

The gross numbers cannot be explained by there being a higher BME population in the selective areas - rather the opposite is true in fact.

We are continually told that BME students - people of all ages in fact - are oppressed by our institutionally racist system. Seems that selective schooling aids in overcoming this. So, what’s the explanation going to be?

For there will have to be some refutation. The British left has as articles of faith both that insistence on the racism of our society and also that comprehensive schooling benefits the less favoured. Somehow this evidence that at least one of those ideas must be wrong will have to be countered.