Madsen Pirie writes about the belief that a bad school benefits from the presence in its midst of children from more motivated families.

The idea that academically gifted children, if they attended sub-standard state schools, would somehow inspire and motivate the others, is strange. It seems to belong to the fairy tales which social engineers tell each other round the camp-fires. In the real world such children are often bullied and demotivated, and scorned because study lacks any street-cred. Educated with others of their kind, however, they can become high achievers.

I'm not sure if I agree with that, in fact I'm pretty sure that I don't. Surely both sets of children are liable to influence each other, to the benefit of the bad ones and to the detriment of the better ones, assuming bad and good are what they are. It need not necessarily be an either/or thing. Madsen could be right about the damage done to the good pupils, but still ignoring the improving effect they nevertheless might have.

Not that this means that motivated families should be forbidden to educate their children as they see fit, just because said children radiate positive educational externalities, so to speak. Even assuming they do.

As it happens, there was a documentary on BBC4 TV (which I am watching a lot these days) last night, about a school in Stoke struggling to improve itself. The staff there certainly thought that having their best pupils enticed away by a neighbouring school, as had apparently been happening, was highly damaging to them. But was this because the remaining pupils then suffered, or merely because it lowered the overall exam success rate? They seemed to believe that the pupils left behind did suffer from the example of their betters being now denied to them, and it makes sense to me that this might be so.

My recollection of my own education is rather the opposite, though. I did best when I was near the top of the class. High status caused the juices to flow. As I proceeded to bigger and "better" educational establishments, I got demoralised at how much better than me the best of my numerous rivals were, and I got dispirited. Lower status lowered my energy rate. But did I actually do worse? Or was I merely not so happy? Maybe I would have been happier at less grand places, but have done worse.

As with so many educational questions: complicated.