But they don't separate them down one tunnel that says "Clever" and another that says "Stupid", on the basis of a one-off test. They separate them into academically able, and technically able, and able at all kinds of other things, by assessing them carefully throughout their schooling years. And children move between one school and another: they are not condemned, as many post-war Britons were, to a second-rate secondary modern.Tragically, in Britain, the 11-plus still defines the argument because we are so desperate to escape its haunting apparition But it does not have to be like that. Labour should stop incanting a flawed ideal and think radically about how to reinvent state schooling. In so doing, Tony Blair needs to win education professionals, as well as parents, to a new approach.What is the real objective? Surely it must be to create a schooling system that can meet the diverse expectations of a diverse population.

We need schools of many kinds, not just one comprehensive kind, or two selective kinds. In large urban areas, where children can easily travel to a variety of schools, it is surely good to encourage differences. One school might have a particular religious orientation; another might have a famous art department on which it lavishes resources; another might be superbly technically endowed. None of this undermines quality.And in less densely populated areas, where parents in practice have a choice between one or two schools, selection is possible within schools: children can be grouped according to aptitude, enthusiasm, effort and commitment.Some comprehensive schools do stream, by form, or subject, or both. But many more are too trapped in the mixed-ability mind-set to contemplate a different approach.

They need to let go of their old verities and look at the inspectors' and academics' evidence that has mounted over many years in favour of grouping pupils by ability, or by their willingness to learn.It is no accident that so much fuss has been made about Ms Harman's decision: education is the new Labour litmus test. Is Mr Blair going to create an ambitious, striving, achieving society, eager and enthusiastic to learn? Or is he going to retrench the pointless argument that has distracted us for far too long?. Last May, it was reported that Nasa was showing interest in some old research into the effects of drugs on the patterns of spiders' webs. With the help of the Ovid PsychLit database we have been investigating what progress had been made since NA Bercel, in 1959, discovered that spiders' webs go totally straggly if they are fed plasma from the blood of catatonic schizophrenics. Research, it appears, has been concentrated on more conventional arachnid diets. In his paper, "The orb-web: An energetic and behavioural estimator of a spider's dynamic foraging and reproductive strategies" (Animal Behaviour, 1994), PM Sherman reported variations in the nightly webs of orb-weaver spiders. One conclusion reached was that hungry spiders spin bigger webs.