"People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn."Margaret Thatcher in 1977 making a very good point in favour of grammar schools; they enabled many clever children from poor families to increase their upward mobility and improve their 'life chances'. The educational establishment justified their doctrinaire move to comprehensive education by saying that helping just some children was unfair. Of course now far fewer children are helped by attending grammar schools but at least it is 'fairer'.
Reading this piece, I have realised that to the supporters of the comprehensive school establishment, the fact that Lady Thatcher was a product of a grammar school is a powerful argument against them.
I think it is still on Youtube, but remember Michael Howard's jibe at Tony Blair, "this grammar school boy doesn't need any lessons from that public school boy " ?
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff !
I was so lucky to go to a grammar school myself, but they were already socialists' public enemy number one.