OPINION: Grammar knows best – North West Evening Mail – NW Evening Mail

AS a semi-product of the grammar school system, I welcome wholeheartedly prime minister Theresa Mays plans for a grammar school revolution.

Mrs May will announce this week that the ban on new grammars is to be reversed and 320m is to be set aside in todays budget for new free schools, many of which are expected to be grammars.

I describe myself as a semi-product of the old grammar school system because I was one of the unfortunate children of the 1970s caught in the fire of the abolition of the grammar school system. In 1979, at the age of 14, my convent grammar in Barrow ceased to exist; the teaching nuns were put out to grass; and the pupils were scattered around various schools in the area - something that would cause outrage today, no doubt.

One of the most strident and oft-parroted criticisms of the grammar school system is that putting children through the trauma of the 11-plus exam is cruel and unfair; that deciding on the path they must take at such a formative age is iniquitous.

Both of which are untrue.

The 11-plus exam was, for me, no more stressful (in fact, considerably less so) than doing my cycling proficiency test. My mum took the wise decision not to tell me I was taking this exam and I simply turned up at St Marys Catholic school in Ulverston one day for the headmaster Mr Maguire to tell me I was doing a little test that day with another pupil. We duly did the test and went back to join the rest of our classmates. No big deal because in those days children were brought up via need-to-know parenting methods, rather than todays insistence on over-sharing of information and including kids barely out of nappies in major family decisions.

The other main criticism levelled at grammar schools is that selective education is inherently unfair and divisive, a criticism that is, at best, naive.

When I arrived at Ulverston Victoria High School in September 1979, I discovered there were no fewer than 12 sets for maths and English. Sets one to four were for the academic high flyers heading for university; sets five to eight for the middle-of-the-road kids heading for the world of work sooner rather than later; and sets eight to 12 for those pupils who were either too naughty or too dim to trouble the education system very much at all. Educationally, the differing groups barely mixed and not much more socially, either.

Other than the fact that all these children wore the same uniform, they more often than not experienced very different school lives from each other.

Of course, if pupils did well, there was always the possibility of moving up a set or more just as under the old system pupils who failed their 11-plus could sit it again and move to their local grammar school at a later date.

Selection in educational terms has become a taboo, yet it is difficult to understand why. The sporting world is selective, so why not the academic world too?

Grammar schools gave clever children from poorer backgrounds real opportunities in life; and the abolition of them was a huge educational setback, leaving many potential high flyers to the mercies of the bog standard comps which have done such a great disservice to so many of our children.

Under Mrs Mays new proposals, the inherently unfair system whereby free transport for pupils is provided only for those attending non-selective schools will be overhauled; with free transport being provided for pupils from poorer families to travel up to 15 miles to a selective school. Thats a real step in the right direction.

A reversal of the ban on grammar schools is long overdue. It was an iniquitous measure which has been to the detriment of far too many children left to flounder in inadequate and failing comprehensive schools. The grammar a school and technical school system worked well; and their abolition was a mistake. It is a mistake from which Brexit Britain needs to learn and learn quickly.

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OPINION: Grammar knows best - North West Evening Mail - NW Evening Mail