UK NEWS

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS ‘SHOULD TARGET POOR’

GRAMMARS: David Davis calls for a revival

Saturday July 4,2009

By Natalie Chalk

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(3)

POOR children should go straight to the front of the queue for grammar schools, a headmaster said yesterday.

Shaun Fenton said pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds should be treated like children in care and be given preference by grammar schools that attract more applications than they have places.

Mr Fenton, the head of Pate’s Grammar School in Cheltenham, has suggested the 11-plus exam should be revised to prevent better-off parents paying to have their children coached for it.

Mr Fenton, who is also chairman of the Grammar Schools Heads’ Association, said: “Grammar schools exist to serve social mobility but they are not allowed to make allowances for the social background of applicants.

“The admissions code is written to be blind to background because of the danger that schools would take advantage of it.

“All schools should make the admissions code aid social mobility. It is about justice, not social engineering.”

Mr Fenton’s call comes after Tory MP David Davis last week called for a revival of grammar schools to “rescue the next generation of the underprivileged”.

GRAMMAR SCHOOL BLUES

05.07.09, 1:04am

In 1939 I passed the school entrance exam ( the only boy in the school) and gained access to the Queen Elizabeth grammar school in Darlington. Up to that point I was a happy kid playing and enjoying life with my peers and school mates. Very few kids from poor areas made it to a grammar school which was full of of boys whose upper class parents had paid for their entrance on the basis of money, not merit. I became quickly aware that my status, and others like me were rated second class, both by teachers and the paid pupils. The snob atmosphere was stifling. My mother worked her heart out to buy my school uniform, football boots, shirt and pants, cricket gear etc...on the never-never of course. My life had taken a seriously wrong turn. My old pals in the street had faded away and I seemed destined to continue my life among snobs. After a couple of years my mother, worried about my failing health decided I should quit and I spent the rest of my education at a local school.
Things have maybe changed now in the UK but, aged 81, I would offer some advise to kids. Work hard at school (that's important) but stay with your peers and avoid like the plague the snooty snobs of this world. And live a clean healthy life...be good, and try to make the world a better place

• Posted by: poorboy • Report Comment

SELECTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION

04.07.09, 2:30pm

Why should intelligent and keen kids have to suffer the distraction and behaviour of numb nuts kids in their classes? The comprhensive system does not work. They have tried it for over 40 years and the only way at present to obtain the best education for your kid is to pay for it. (Or adopt a religion to get your kid into a faith school)

This also is a question that I have often thought about. Why are faith schools so good and non-faith schools so bad? Why can't all schools be the same? The answer of course is that socialism does not work as George Orwell wrote, "All men are equal but some are more equal than others."

Just like the mum who was in the news for lying about her home address to enable her kids to get into a good school rather than a sink school, just goes to show that people are naturally competitive.

As the words of that great socialist anthem goes: The working class can kiss my a**e, I've got the foreman's job at last.

• Posted by: Harveymiff • Report Comment

EDUCATE THAT HEAD !

04.07.09, 11:41am

That headmaster needs educating !
The whole point of grammar schools is that their educational opportunities are awarded competitively by testing and entirely on academic merit on a level playing field. The places are thereby awarded to those who can most benefit from them.
If places are instead allocated based on the interference of a typically loony and irrational socialist criterion based on social status rather than academic merit, the entire point of Grammar Schools will go down the pan.
Mere social poverty does not generate an ability to benefit from a Grammar School education, and there are clever and less-clever kids in both well-off and poorer social environments.
So, as usual, the inteference of socialist dogma would produce equality all right .... in a downward direction.

• Posted by: TrevorD • Report Comment