The theme of Lord Kinnock’s lecture to the PLP, Owen Smith’s argument in the Labour leadership hustings in Cardiff on Thursday (Report, 5 August), and Jonathan Freedland’s article on Saturday (Corbyn can’t dismiss the importance of MPs, 6 August) is the primacy of elections in “winning power”.
Forgive me, I am a teacher. I now read that the government wants to reintroduce grammar schools. We already know that it wants to cut funding for schools in cities, with consultation on exactly how much due next term. The thousands of parents and teachers who will be outraged by these decisions do not have the luxury of waiting for the possible election of a Labour government in 2020. We have to resist now. Support from Labour, in parliament and out, will help us win and help Labour win in 2020. With the current leadership we can be sure of that support.
Paul Atkin
London
• In the run-up to the 1993 local elections the ruling Conservative group in “selective” Lincolnshire hoped to curry favour in what was then all “comprehensive” Lincoln by turning the one secondary school it controlled into a grammar. The reaction from the remaining grant-maintained schools was to enter candidates in all Lincoln county division elections under the slogan “Say NO to secondary moderns”. The result was that most seats in Greater Lincoln turned Labour or Lib Dem and, for the first and only time since the council was formed in 1974, the Tories were consigned to the opposition benches.
If you introduce grammar schools you convert all the rest into secondary moderns, which is, in effect, what you have today in the rest of the county, where selection at 11-plus still occurs. The last thing that secondary education in England needs, imperfect as it undoubtedly is, is a return to a system that was manifestly wrong 60 years ago and is equally wrong today.
John Marriott
Lincoln
• Owen Smith is wrong to say that the move towards grammar schools is a “sign of the weakness of Labour as an opposition” in that the Tories “think they can get away with it”. What it actually signifies is that Theresa May’s talk about reducing inequality is yet more Tory rhetoric; her determination to display compassionate Conservatism is simply political posturing.
To return state education to the days of selection, when it means that up to 80% of 11-year-olds, mostly from poor backgrounds, are denied access to an education designed to suit the needs of a privileged few, is doing the exact opposite of creating “a country that works for everyone”. May might well believe in the grammar school mythology, but there are thousands of us, who experienced first-hand the divisiveness of the system and its appalling unfairness and inefficiency, willing to testify otherwise. It’s a myth that needs debunking once and for all.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• As our current education system is already geared towards those who are going to pass exams, instead of more grammar schools we need more technical education, not just for the non-academic but for all children if we are to catch up with our major competitors in a global economy (Letters, 8 August).
Comprehensives were originally intended to provide this but the resources were never really put in, just as we had a dearth of technical schools under the 11-plus system.
Margaret Phelps
Penarth, Glamorgan
• Is it too simplistic to suggest that the majority of grammar school places should go to those children who have attended local state primary schools? In my limited experience of the system, all too often children have been “hothoused” in the private sector and many of them are not local to the area. To grant significantly more places to able children from the local state system would, in one step, be a pointer in the right direction to social mobility.
Elisabeth Smith
Cheltenham
• In the heyday of grammar schools only 2% of pupils from a skilled manual background and 1% from an unskilled background went to university. The Robbins report of 1964 stated that although 26% of children were from unskilled backgrounds, just 0.3% of those got two or more A-levels at grammar schools.
In 2015 only 2.6% of grammar pupils were entitled to free school meals, compared with 14.9% in all schools; 40% of their pupils came from the least deprived quartile against 25% in all schools, and 8% were from the most deprived quartile compared with 20% in all schools. 91% of grammar pupils had achieved above Level 4 at the end of primary school, compared with 33% in comprehensive schools.
Selection led to social segregation being so unpopular by the 1960s that both major political parties were happy to abolish it. Middle-class parents who believed grammar schools were theirs were incensed that their children were not selected. Theresa May hides her belief that middle-class parents have a right to grammar schools by claiming that they promote social mobility, and includes a few places for the disadvantaged to give the illusion that she is making education work for the many and not just the few.
John Gaskin
Drifield
• The first time I ever remember being under real pressure was in my last year of primary school. I must have been 10. At assembly my headmaster told us we were to face the most important day of our lives: the 11-plus, an exam that would effectively mean the smartest kids in the school would go onto receive an incredibly good and free education. Failure was not an option.
I went on to pass that exam and got accepted into Rochester Grammar School for Girls – now one of the top performing state schools in the country. My older brother, who failed the exam, went on to attend one of the worst schools in the region. I sailed through school by having access to some quite brilliant teachers. It was world-class education which saw me accepted into the University of Birmingham to study economics. My brother left school at 16 with handful of exams and the offer of a job at the local council.
The Conservatives would argue this is as it should be. But what about the kids like my brother who failed the exam? Despite his terrible education, my brother worked his way up through the local authority, passed his accountancy exams and went onto study an MBA.
But he’s probably about five years behind where other university-educated peers are in their careers because he ended up at a terrible school which didn’t offer the classics or spot his potential.
A grammar school system is fundamentally unfair. A great education should be available for British every child, not just one who happens to pass an exam when they are 10 years old.
Julia Timms
Senior media advisor, The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney
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