Conservative Party and Grammar Schools

[John Simkin]

David Cameron has now changed his position on grammar schools. He is now saying that if a LEA has grammar schools then it should be allowed to expand them. This shows that his claim to be interested in improving the education of all our children is a lie. This change of policy is a result of shadow minister Dominic Grieve claiming that his area should be allowed to build more grammar schools. According to DFES statistics there are five secondary schools in Grieve's constituency; two grammar and three secondary modern. The percentage A*-C grade GCSE passes for the grammar schools are 94% and 100%. The percentages at the secondary moderns are 25%, 25% and 31% and one has been placed in special measures. Great for some but not for the majority.

[Guest]

The percentage A*-C grade GCSE passes for the grammar schools are 94% and 100%. The percentages at the secondary moderns are 25%, 25% and 31% and one has been placed in special measures. Great for some but not for the majority.

If you look at a county like Kent (where the tripartite system still persists across the whole county) you will see a similar pattern. Closer analysis uncovers not just the disgraceful lack of equal opportunities with the majority being condemned to low expectations and low standards in under funded poorly staffed secondary modern schools, but also the complacency and under achievement of the grammar schools..... - at every level Kent underachieves in comparison to similar counties run on the comprehensive model.

[David Richardson]

My sisters were going to a comprehensive school in Harrow at the same time as I was teaching in a Technical High School (the 'middle' of the tripartite system). They were able to choose between an additional 25 subjects over and above the ones on offer at the school I worked at. Some of these were like Photography, but most of them were things like Advanced Statistics for everyone studying A Level Maths.

If you look at selective schools as places where pupils are educated, then they do a pretty poor job, given the resources showered on them. If, on the other hand, you see them as a way of providing a narrow section of the population with social contacts useful later in life, then they're doing their job. The problem is that most sensible societies want the former from their school system, rather than the latter … which is why we're choosing to put our children through the Swedish, rather than the British educational system.