Joanne Bartley’s open letter to Nicky Morgan (12 April) spelled out with passionate clarity the illogic of, and inequality that follows from, selecting children at 11. Such a policy has no place in a 21st-century education system. The confusion of the present government is clear: supposedly advocating “good schools for all” while sanctioning the widespread expansion of grammar schools around the country, damaging the education of the majority (most from low-income families) wherever they spring up.
But Tory policy also poses a fresh challenge for Labour, which has been fatally ambiguous on this issue. If Labour in 1997, then possessing a decisive and large majority, had phased out the remaining grammar schools, we would not be in the position we are in today. In Jeremy Corbyn, Labour has a leader opposed to selection. In this, the 50th year of comprehensive education, the party should not only continue to robustly make clear its distance from the underhand elitism of the Conservatives, but should formulate a clear policy for the phasing out of selective education in all parts of the country.
Melissa Benn, Fiona Millar, John Edmonds
Comprehensive Future
• In Reading, of eight secondary schools, six are academies (75%) and two are in special measures (one academy and one local authority school). We are told that only 57.5% of pupils hit their key targets at GCSE last year with this dropping to 23.8% of pupils on free school meals. This figure apparently represents the lowest in the south-east and one of the lowest in the country. In some quarters, Reading council is quite unreasonably being blamed for results in schools over which it has no control. It is nonsense to claim that academising schools will necessarily raise standards – it may also make no difference or make things worse.
Melanie White
Reading
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