My father grew up in the Yorkshire coalfields during the Great Depression, enduring the kind of threadbare poverty that most people today only read about. His eventual escape from that bleak situation was secured by a diligent schoolteacher who, noticing in him a gift for mathematics, facilitated his transfer from the secondary modern school to the local grammar.

Most of the pupils at the grammar school were of a higher social class than colliery workers' children like my father, and sometimes took pleasure in taunting them. Nevertheless he – a natural scholar – excelled academically, and after passing his "O"-level exams and leaving school, earned a coveted place as a trainee pilot with the RAF. After wartime service (spent mainly in the far east) he joined the Ministry of Defence, started a family, and several years later was able to fulfill a longtime ambition of moving "down south".

We, his children, consequently enjoyed a very different kind of early life, in the relative prosperity of 1960s suburban London, where our father's reminiscences of grim northern poverty would sometimes elicit snickering, so strange and remote they seemed from our daily experience. But one thing he successfully drummed into us was the value of education, not just as a path to interesting and rewarding work, but for its inherent "character building" qualities (which sounds quaintly old-fashioned now).

I too attended grammar school, a competitive place where boys from varied backgrounds were introduced to the mysteries of Latin, trigonometry, organic chemistry and so on, under the tutelage of dedicated teachers. I can clearly recall the exhilaration of my first year, the sheer enjoyment of learning, which is something that every child, in my view, should have the chance to experience.

I would like to be able to say that the improvements in schooling – especially the increased access of working class children to academic education, hence to professional careers – that occurred during the middle decades of the twentieth century have continued into the twenty-first. But it would not be true. Because the last ten years or more have seen a relative deterioration in the attainments of poorer children, and especially white boys. Recent newspaper headlines tell the story:

• "White working class boys bottom of the class in English" (Independent, 19 June 2009)
• "White working class boys least likely to go to university" (Times, 25 June 2008)
• "Half school 'failures' are white working-class boys, says report" (Guardian, 22 June 2007)
• and on and on.

It seems to me quite odd that whilst so many native British children are denied an adequate basic education, the offspring of recently arrived Asian and other minorities are entering our universities in droves, receiving higher education partly paid for by the parents of the very boys whose schooling has been so shamefully neglected. I am not criticizing studious immigrants, but I am criticizing the anti-British perversity of successive governments who have encouraged such a lopsided situation to develop.

Some politicians and educators try to tell us that this has all been some kind of unfortunate accident. But I don't buy it. If 1930s urban schools were able take poor children – some of them so hungry much of the time that they could barely focus on their lessons – and turn them into scientists, historians and military officers, then frankly I don't understand how today's resource- and technology-rich schools can turn out 17-year-olds lacking basic literacy or numeracy.

I don't wish to oversimplify the problem, and I understand that there may be many contributing causes of academic failure, including home circumstances, parental influence and societal/media denigration of working class children. But it is also true that many liberal teachers – especially liberal, feminist teachers – fear and dislike the robust masculinity of some working class boys, and take it as their duty to crush the spirit out of the loudest and liveliest of them, in some cases even pathologizing them as sufferers of "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" or other phoney conditions, to be "treated" with  psychoactive drugs like Ritalin.

There is also the problem of low expectation, which always suppresses aspiration and achievement. Additionally, in city schools, there are the damaging effects of including large numbers of immigrant children, many of whom, speaking little English, take up inordinate amounts of teachers' time and energy. Finally, there is the ideological hostility of a minority of teachers, who imagine that their first loyalty is to the children of "oppressed" and "disadvantaged" ethnic minorities, rather than to their own kind.

If things continue as they are, there will come a time when great numbers of concerned parents will withdraw their support for comprehensive state education, either because of its low standards or for other reasons, such as the indoctrination of their children. Already we are seeing signs of opt-out, with some families (and would-be parents) moving to the catchment areas of the few remaining grammar schools, other trying to educate kids at home, or (those who can afford it) switching their offspring to private schools. But what are the options for the majority of parents, beyond sending their children to the local sink comprehensive? Unfortunately none, at present.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope. The Conservative Party's education policy contains a promising proposal based on the idea of "free schools", like those introduced in Sweden in the early 1990s and now successfully educating many primary- and secondary-age children there. The crux of the proposal is that charitable bodies controlled by local people would be enabled to set up and run new schools, funded entirely by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The schools would be non-selective, with no minimum number of pupils, so that in principle small establishments of a couple of dozen pupils would be possible. Most importantly, the new schools would have more autonomy than existing state schools in setting the educational curriculum.

In an Observer article of 23 August 2009 entitled, "Why I will set up a new school to give my children the best chance in life", Toby Young (son of Open University founder Michael Young) described his plan to establish one such free school in his part of London. He is confident that, with the help of other enthusiastic parents, he will be able to manage the process:

"My plan is to create a 'comprehensive grammar', ... traditional curriculum, competitive atmosphere, zero tolerance of disruptive behaviour ... It will be for 11–16s, with a total of 300 pupils. Assuming the Conservatives are in power by June 2010, I should be open for business in September 2011. ... the biggest obstacle will be finding a suitable site and then converting it for school use, but, once I've done that, the mechanics ... shouldn't be too hard. ... I've been deluged with emails from local parents offering to help. It seems I'm not alone in wanting to send my children to a school ... that isn't burdened with a progressive educational agenda."

If a future Conservative government honours its current commitment to free schools (a big if, admittedly, considering how much they will cost), then I would suggest that we nationalists should cautiously welcome the idea, because it offers the possibility of setting up high-quality, grammar-type schools in working class areas. I believe that the British National Party, through its local activists, could play a vitally important role in helping to mobilize local communities to get the schools up and running.

Now I am not suggesting that, as a general rule, the BNP should do the Conservatives' work for them. But in this particular case, there may be much to be gained, in terms of eliminating leftist brainwashing from schools, improving the teaching of science, technology, national history and culture, and so on, and equipping our youngsters for positions of influence and responsibility in adult life. Moreover, local activism around the issue of educational reform could help nationalists to make their mark in community life and politics.

We cannot be sure yet how much curricular freedom will be allowed in the new schools, but I anticipate that, for example, a strong emphasis on the teaching of positive British history would not be opposed if the majority of parents were in favour. (Bear in mind that not only native British parents, but also many ethnic minority parents, are opposed to political correctness in education. It is leftist-liberal educationists who have caused the damage, and the free schools scheme could significantly reduce their influence.)

Not being a parent myself, I will leave open the question of what changes to the curriculum will be necessary for the education of the next generation of knowledgeable, strong, adaptable and confident Britons.

(Note 1: parents and/or teachers seeking further information and guidance can contact the The New Schools Network (NSN), the central body which will support the setting up of free schools in the UK.)

(Note 2: Toby Young's blog charting his progress is on the new school's website: www.westlondonfreeschool.co.uk He will also be making a TV series about it for BBC2.)