Let's recall what has been done to grammar schools. In the 1960s, Tony Crosland, the then Education Secretary, famously - and obscenely - declared, "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f****** grammar school in England and Wales and Northern Ireland."

The grammar schools were founded well before the state took over British education. Most were created in the 19th century and before. Rich people endowed them with land and money to subsidise the education of poor children.

Then the state took control of most grammar - and religious - schools. For a long time, they held onto the standards of behaviour and academic excellence which they had developed over decades and centuries. They continued to do well for their children.

My uncle, now retired, came from a family of modest means. He attended one and went on to Oxford University and a top job in the civil service. A friend went to a grammar school and then to Cambridge and a fortune in investment management. Grammar schools were often more academically intense than private schools.

But three things happened. First, successive Labour governments, led by Tony Crosland, closed down as many grammar schools as they could. Second, their independence - and the independence of the religious schools too - was gradually undermined by governments of both colours. And third, because there were fewer top schools within the state system, the middle and upper classes struggled ever more determinedly to get their children into them. As a result, the poor got squeezed out.

Tony Blair, for example, found a way to get his boys into the London Oratory - one of the best state schools in London. At the London Oratory in 2002, nine of ten children got five or more good GCSE grades. Nearby, meanwhile, at another state school called Phoenix High, barely more than a fifth of the children managed the same. And who went there? The poor, including 18 per cent asylum-seekers.

Richer people move houses to get in the catchment areas of better schools. A house within the catchment area of a good primary school can cost as much as a third more than a similar home in the next street. Richer people have their children tutored to get into the grammar schools. The system is now manipulated for the benefit of the better off, leaving the poor with the 'bog-standard comprehensives", as Alastair Campbell, the Labour party spin-doctor once called them. It is not surprising, therefore, that among the lowest socio-economic group, a mere 1.7 per cent go on to receive a full university degree - a twentieth of the proportion among the top group.

It is an enormous contrast with what happened to one boy, brought up by his uncle, a cobbler, in a remote part of North-West Wales. While at his local school, he read Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and classic fiction including novels by Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. He learned Latin and knew his bible so well that he was able to quote from it at will for the rest of this life. He became a successful lawyer and eventually Prime Minister. David Lloyd George went to a Church of England school before such schools were controlled by the state. What chance would a boy in such circumstances now have of achieving the same? Precious little. The average standard of schooling has deteriorated.

The best result would be achieved by a return to the independent system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For those who think that is 'politically impossible', there is another alternative. The recent report says that the opportunities for the poor in Britain are worse than in certain Nordic countries including Sweden and Denmark. These have less monolithic state education structures than we do. In Denmark, parents can take the money provided by the state and use it to send their children to independent schools. They can even start up new, independent schools. Parents, including the poor, have real choice.

Sweden, in 1992, allowed parents to take 85 per cent of the cost of state schooling and spend it at any kind of school they like. Grades have improved significantly.

We need to face the fact that our state education system is failing the poor. It is only through radical change in the structure that we will enable the poor of the future to have a better chance of success.