The Economist thinks it is. I always take note of the Economist’s views, if for no other reason than its position as the leading influence on Right-leaning (that is, currently powerful) opinion-formers.

lts philosophical position - that choice, diversity, competition, individual enterprise are ultimately the best guarantors of any system’s success - has led it over the years to a critique of Government education policy which sometimes appears to be to the Right of Sheila Lawlor.

It has been enthusiastically in favour of opting out, and loves testing (lots of it) though it has undergone a latter-day conversion to a value-added analysis. It has in the past promoted vouchers and is queasy about the national curriculum. It certainly doesn’t have much time for local education authorities.

But at the same time it has a sensitive nose for privilege and has smelt a rat on the issue of admissions. Indeed, thanks to the well-publicised issue of certain prominent Catholic schools and the Labour leadership, the world is now aware of what the insiders were saying all along: that admission on the basis of interviews leads to covert social selection. “Even selection by exam results,” says the Economist, “would be better than such an arbitrary way of deciding who gets in where.”

Note that “even”. Despite its general political position, the Economist is not encouraging the Government to return to selective schooling, which it says would “risk the emergence of two types of school”.

The diversified specialist secondary school thus emerges primarily as a solution devised for the purposes of social engineering rather than educational thinking. The old selective system drove too sharp a cleft between the sheep and the goats. The comprehensive system has been too “monochrome” and has “encouraged mediocrity”. A system of many specialisms would at last achieve that holy grail of “parity of esteem” where “there would be no good or bad schools, just the right school for each pupil. Schools would select pupils not on exam success but on their aptitude for their chosen specialism, such as technology, music or languages.” But would it work?

In terms of social engineering, I can see such a system making it easier for middle-class parents to escape local working-class schools without the embarrassment this now sometimes causes. It might give ambitious parents of what the Economist calls “poor but bright” children more choice than they have at present. But I have less faith that an admission system based on “aptitude” would do anything but exacerbate social polarisation.

After all, which children are likely to manifest an aptitude for technology, or music, or languages? Those whose parents have bought them home computers, music lessons and French lessons. I can see a future in which parents would research local secondary schools when their children were seven or eight and decide which aptitude they were going to foster. It would be a short step to a demand for specialisation in the primary school.

Nor do I see a system of diversified secondary schools solving one of the most intractable of our present problems, the concentration of disturbed and difficult and slow-learning children - or the children of disturbed and difficult and slow-learning parents, which is not necessarily the same thing - in the same schools, and those schools then descending the vicious spiral of poor results, unpopularity, loss of funding and loss of teaching talent.

This has all too often been the result of the American “magnet school” programmes. These were introduced quite openly, and for the best of motives, to achieve a social end: racial integration. White families fleeing the inner cities might be tempted to stay, or at least send their children back to specialist high schools. The strategy worked in many cases, but the price was to intensify the segregation and isolation of the majority of schools which were left out of the scheme.

“But every school would have its own specialism,” say the enthusiasts. “There would be no sink schools.” I tried this argument on a teacher in a very depressed inner-city school in Manhattan. “Oh yes,” she said, “Our school is a magnet school for Automotive Arts.” The face she pulled was both for the pretentiousness of the term and the hollowness of the claim of parity.

There is another important part of this argument. Whether or not a scheme of specialist schools can work as social engineering - and I am sceptical - would it work educationally? Would the curriculum be satisfactory?

Choir schools appear to be serious evidence that it can be. There is plenty of testimony that, for future musicians and future civil servants and financiers alike, these have provided both a specialist and an adequately general education from a very young age. But are there other examples? Choristers are, after all, a very small, unusually motivated and highly selective group who work extremely long hours.

Yet the wave of enthusiasm for specialist schools is carried on a tide of belief that this might be possible for all children. The allure of the free 20 per cent promoted by Sir Ron Dearing lies not just in the additional discretion for teachers but also in this enticing vision of every 11-year-old as the equivalent of a choral scholar.

Trying to be fair-minded, I have applied this template to the 11-year-old I know best. I have to say that, yes, she could be the equivalent of a choral scholar. She has the tenacity to dedicate long hours to her specialist subject combined with ability to keep abreast of the rest. As well as being a good all-rounder, she is a star at football and would be a natural for a school specialising in physical education.

But, supposing such a school were available, would I recommend such a course? For a host of reasons, no. And if it wouldn’t be good enough for her, why should it be good enough for others, less fortunate and gifted?