Your editorial on grammar schools (9 September) omits a critical factor: adult education. Which is perhaps not surprising as, aside from the Workers’ Educational Association, little of that still critically required tradition remains. Peter Wilby, in a Guardian profile (21 October 2014) of Alan Tuckett, a former CEO of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, quoted Tuckett thus: “I wanted to involve those who were turned off education and that won’t happen unless we have serious public investment.”
You note that some see grammar schools as “historic engines of social mobility”. Similar claims can be made for adult education, with a bonus: children of parents who persist in adult education to university are more likely themselves to go to university. It was a generational process, since parents studying at home as they “returned to learning” established critical habits for their children; a quiet place and time to do that.
I failed the 11-plus, an interview, and the 13-plus at secondary school (no doubt disappointing Edward Short, a future secretary of state for education, my headteacher). In my late 20s, as a shop steward in shipbuilding, I returned to night school, was awarded a TUC scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford, then a state scholarship to Magdalen College, and spent the next 40 years as a tutor-organiser in adult education. What is needed is the re-establishment of those “historic engines of social mobility”, instead of restoring grammar schools.
David Browning
Huddersfield
• In his heartfelt letter on failing the 11-plus (9 September), Dr Paraskos captures exactly the corroding effects of knowing at such a young age that you are in the wrong place. The legacy is to have to spend half a life playing catch-up. The old route to recovery used to be night school and further education colleges. This route has been sorely diminished over the years. If the plan really is to go for selection, then it must be accompanied by a recognition that all systems make mistakes and that a second-chance route should be available to those who can still find the motivation to strive.
Professor Michael Riley
London
• Wasn’t there a report that said good teachers were the key to improving standards? So who will be teaching in these grammar schools? Surely the same people who are now teaching in non-grammar schools.
Eira Hughes
Hyde, Cheshire
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