In 1959 I passed the 11-plus and went to a grammar school in Birmingham. By the nature of things most of my class failed, and on our way home from school on the day we had the results one of my mates was clearly upset and wouldn’t speak to me. I didn’t understand why, but one of our other friends (another “failure”) said to me “just because you passed doesn’t mean you’re any better than him”. The idea hadn’t occurred to me, but I’ve remembered that moment ever since and my first political cause was the introduction of genuine comprehensive education. Of course, that principle has been severely watered down over the years with academisation and the inane gimmick of “specialist” schools, most of which are no such thing. The continued existence of state-sponsored religious schools has remained one way of continuing with backdoor selection.
But Theresa May’s proposals to bring back grammar schools and, inevitably, secondary moderns take us back to the dark days of the 1950s when people like me got a decent education and the rest got second best. Her half-baked ideas will no doubt win the approval of golf club bores in Surrey but should be opposed with all our might by everyone else.
Peter Cresswell
Liverpool
• Well done, John O’Farrell (Here’s what grammars did to my family, 13 September) for debunking the grammar school myth. I passed the 11-plus in 1944. My dad paid for the first year until the 1944 Education Act kicked in. I was paraded in my school uniform for all to see. For the first year I came second and third in the B stream. So they moved me to the A stream, where I came bottom for the next four years! So I was a dubbed a failure in the eyes of my family, neighbours and friends. I left at 16 with poor O-level results – a failure destined for a routine office job. It took 20 years for me to realise I could succeed – and I did. But all those wasted years of dreary pen-pushing were lost for ever.
Selection at 11 stifles and stultifies the 90% who do not make the so-called top grade. Think again, Mrs May!
Ron Jeffries
Ilford, Essex
• On behalf of that 80% of the population who failed the 11-plus, may I extol the virtues of the marvellous teachers that I encountered for four years at my secondary modern school in Wigan.
St Mark’s CE secondary modern school for girls gave me and many others a sense of belonging, a sense that we were not failures, and a good, varied education.
The headteacher, the indomitable Miss Snelson, said that if secondary moderns had been given the same money as grammars/high schools, she and her staff would have been able to provide a far higher quality of education. She fought for the founding of an excellent comprehensive school that continues to send many children into the workforce, to apprentice programmes and to university and many other walks of life.
Could we please interview ex-secondary modern school pupils instead of constantly talking to the grammar successes? At the age of 11, we were denigrated, treated as factory fodder and worthy of nothing. But despite this, we did achieve. As a child from a council estate, in a northern industrial town, I too have achieved. I have a BA and an MA. I’ve lived abroad and succeeded in several different careers. I am not alone in these achievements – five other girls in my class have degrees and many others have interesting, successful careers. Talk to us. Interview us.
Jan Lancaster
Manchester
• In 1954 I passed the 11-plus. My parents’ incentive was a new bike and I was duly rewarded, as had been my brother. My sister, who failed the exam, was not so lucky and went bikeless to the local secondary modern. I still remember with shame showing off my new bike at my primary school and the bitter disappointment of some envious friends. My teacher informed my parents that I ought not have passed. It saddens me that children were treated with such cruelty. Shame on this government.
Chris Bocci
Freshford, Somerset
• Grammar school provision and the exercise of parental choice meant that I was prevented from taking up my grammar school scholarship place because, as my father said: “Education is wasted on girls.” My mother took the line: “I never had anything, so why should you?” So a drunk and a mother crushed by her own unhappy life ensured that their parental choice was fully exercised.
I was one of three girls in my secondary modern class who didn’t take up their grammar school place. When asked (in front of the class), why I was not taking advantage of my golden opportunity, I lied: “Because I didn’t want to.” It didn’t go down well with the teacher. (I don’t remember what excuses the other two gave.) That’s three girls in one school in one year. How many others over the country in how many years?
In four years I learned how to make clothes for myself and to bake cakes. There were no parents’ evenings (not that mine would have attended anyway) and no school reports. I left at 15 with no qualifications because there were no exams. We were told by the English teacher (also responsible for “careers” advice): “You can forget any fancy ideas. You’ll have a job in a factory, a shop or an office.”
In March 2015 there were 69,540 children in local authority care, so not everyone can be relied upon to exercise parental choice responsibly.
Name and address supplied
• Selection at 11? Not in my case. Selection was after the primary school. I had a birthday at the end of August and, with classes for starting the school year taken from September to August, pupils with a birthday in September received one year extra before selection took place to the junior school.
The position was worsened by a six-month illness. Not surprisingly I ended up in the B stream. With no mobility between classes; at 11, all of the A stream went to grammar schools and all the B and C streams to secondary moderns. I was allocated to a sink school where the head, coming from a grammar school, considered all pupils to be ignorant and incapable of academic achievement, such was the implication in a letter written to my father. I was saved by transferring to the excellent St Peter’s Collegiate School, Wolverhampton, also a secondary modern, where the head, Mr RDK Storer, promoted academic achievement. His encouragement led me to gain two degrees and return as a teacher to the school.
Richard Whitfield
Weston-super-Mare, Somerset
• According to Jonathan Freedland (Theresa May’s nostalgia may be heartfelt, but it’s wrong, 10 September) “Grammar schools are wonderful for those who are selected”, the problems being only for those who are not.
My own experience at a grammar was far from wonderful. I passed the 11-plus in 1948. The junior school I attended from 1945 was rigidly streamed and those in the so-called “scholarship” class were intensively coached for the exam. I was one of the majority in the school who, according to the headmaster, were “typical secondary modern” pupils. Contrary to all expectations, I was one of the minority who passed the exam and was admitted to a prestigious east London co-educational grammar school which was also streamed, according to test scores, into classes Alpha, A, X and Y. Due to what would now be referred to as “value-added” points because of my young age at entry, I was allocated to 1 alpha. By the second year I had been relegated to 2 Y and remained in the bottom Y stream for the rest of my time there. Like most of my classmates I left school with just a few O-levels. The school was thoroughly elitist. It excelled in sports and athletics. Boys were expected to join the combined cadet force. Those of us who neither excelled academically nor at sports, and refused to join the cadets, were regarded as failures.
The selective system had a pernicious effect on friendships and even within families. My sister passed the 11-plus; my younger brother failed. I look back on my own experience as a time of great stress and little pleasure.
Both my daughters attended the local north-west London comprehensive school in the 1990s, where they achieved excellent exam results, leading to a first-class honours degree in one case and a PhD in the other.
Name and address supplied
• I am enormously grateful for the advantages of a grammar school education, and would particularly like to thank the two unknown 11-plus failures who were sent to the local secondary modern to make it possible.
Revd Philip Welsh
London
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