This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/17/good-comprehensives-deserve-high-praise
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Good comprehensives deserve high praise Good comprehensives deserve high praise | |
| (2 months later) | |
| Grammar schools today are tricky to criticise when their students achieve highly, which they often do (Shame on us for keeping every existing grammar school, in the face of all the facts, 11 October; My friends are hypocrites about schools, 12 October). Good comprehensives merit even higher praise. Secondary moderns and comprehensives with an unbalanced intake have a much tougher task on their hands. Where pupils are in schools that are less successful, there is a significant loss of individual and collective achievement. It is self-evident that all pupils deserve a good school that can cater effectively for diverse levels of attainment. We do not hear enough about schools that successfully do this. | Grammar schools today are tricky to criticise when their students achieve highly, which they often do (Shame on us for keeping every existing grammar school, in the face of all the facts, 11 October; My friends are hypocrites about schools, 12 October). Good comprehensives merit even higher praise. Secondary moderns and comprehensives with an unbalanced intake have a much tougher task on their hands. Where pupils are in schools that are less successful, there is a significant loss of individual and collective achievement. It is self-evident that all pupils deserve a good school that can cater effectively for diverse levels of attainment. We do not hear enough about schools that successfully do this. |
| I would very much like to see Ofsted asked to report on the social and educational impact of grammars, with a guarantee that any findings will not be subject to government interference. I would also like to see a concerted campaign by the Guardian to demonstrate what excellent all-ability schools actually do. Readers would need not just anecdote and conventional reportage but data as well, including the findings of research programmes carried out by universities and other interested bodies. The issue also needs political support. Unless such matters of public concern are thoroughly investigated and reported on, England is in grave danger of declining into an enclave of well-heeled elite groups cherrypicking life opportunities at will, leaving the rest to scramble for the leftovers. All our children deserve the very best education, and we should as a nation see that they get it.Duncan ReidCheltenham | I would very much like to see Ofsted asked to report on the social and educational impact of grammars, with a guarantee that any findings will not be subject to government interference. I would also like to see a concerted campaign by the Guardian to demonstrate what excellent all-ability schools actually do. Readers would need not just anecdote and conventional reportage but data as well, including the findings of research programmes carried out by universities and other interested bodies. The issue also needs political support. Unless such matters of public concern are thoroughly investigated and reported on, England is in grave danger of declining into an enclave of well-heeled elite groups cherrypicking life opportunities at will, leaving the rest to scramble for the leftovers. All our children deserve the very best education, and we should as a nation see that they get it.Duncan ReidCheltenham |
| • Sadly, it comes as no surprise that even the present Labour leadership lacks the moral courage to commit to ending the 11-plus once and for all. It was a Labour government that decided to interpret the great 1944 Education Act by continuing with the prewar, class-based system of selection at 11, and the principal architect of this disastrous system was not RA Butler but Ellen Wilkinson, the first postwar minister of education. Although a highly intelligent, liberal and humane woman, she, like so many of her successors, could not imagine any high-quality system of education other than the one that she herself had enjoyed. It took her a considerable struggle to overcome strong internal resistance from within her own party – indeed her initial circular aroused such fury among her colleagues that it had to be withdrawn – but, in the end, with the help of Attlee and that of her own backward-looking civil servants, she got her way in betraying the educational future of most of the nation’s children, a betrayal for which subsequent Labour governments have never quite had the courage to atone. | • Sadly, it comes as no surprise that even the present Labour leadership lacks the moral courage to commit to ending the 11-plus once and for all. It was a Labour government that decided to interpret the great 1944 Education Act by continuing with the prewar, class-based system of selection at 11, and the principal architect of this disastrous system was not RA Butler but Ellen Wilkinson, the first postwar minister of education. Although a highly intelligent, liberal and humane woman, she, like so many of her successors, could not imagine any high-quality system of education other than the one that she herself had enjoyed. It took her a considerable struggle to overcome strong internal resistance from within her own party – indeed her initial circular aroused such fury among her colleagues that it had to be withdrawn – but, in the end, with the help of Attlee and that of her own backward-looking civil servants, she got her way in betraying the educational future of most of the nation’s children, a betrayal for which subsequent Labour governments have never quite had the courage to atone. |
| The first opportunity for Labour to put things right was grasped so timidly and half-heartedly by Harold Wilson in 1965 and 1970 that 163 selective schools were left in place, with disastrous consequences for the status of comprehensive schools in many areas of the country. Worse, in 1997, it was a Labour education secretary – David Blunkett – who, having said “Let me say this very slowly indeed. Watch my lips: no selection by examination or interview under a Labour government”, then failed to carry the policy through, as a result of which the number of children in selective schools actually increased while Labour was in power.Michael PykeCampaign for State Education | The first opportunity for Labour to put things right was grasped so timidly and half-heartedly by Harold Wilson in 1965 and 1970 that 163 selective schools were left in place, with disastrous consequences for the status of comprehensive schools in many areas of the country. Worse, in 1997, it was a Labour education secretary – David Blunkett – who, having said “Let me say this very slowly indeed. Watch my lips: no selection by examination or interview under a Labour government”, then failed to carry the policy through, as a result of which the number of children in selective schools actually increased while Labour was in power.Michael PykeCampaign for State Education |
| • Shami Chakrabarti has been accused of hypocrisy for sending her son to a fee-paying school (Shami Chakrabarti has undermined the education system she argues for, theguardian.com, 10 October). I find this an illogical accusation. Labour disapproves of private education because it bestows unfair advantages on its recipients. The cause of remedying this injustice would only be weakened by leaving those unfair advantages exclusively in the hands of Labour’s opponents. Clement Attlee and Tony Blair (five Labour election victories between them) were educated at fee-paying schools. We should exploit the current iniquitous system well enough to earn the right to dismantle it.David ButlerLondon | • Shami Chakrabarti has been accused of hypocrisy for sending her son to a fee-paying school (Shami Chakrabarti has undermined the education system she argues for, theguardian.com, 10 October). I find this an illogical accusation. Labour disapproves of private education because it bestows unfair advantages on its recipients. The cause of remedying this injustice would only be weakened by leaving those unfair advantages exclusively in the hands of Labour’s opponents. Clement Attlee and Tony Blair (five Labour election victories between them) were educated at fee-paying schools. We should exploit the current iniquitous system well enough to earn the right to dismantle it.David ButlerLondon |
| • On 29 June 2001 Michael Young, author of The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), wrote in the Guardian expressing dismay about how his book had been misunderstood as positive about, rather than critical of, an ideology that justifies inequality and the rule of experts. Young’s dismay was directed at Blair. Now Theresa May envisages repeal of the 1998 ban on newly established grammar schools in order to make Britain more meritocratic. | • On 29 June 2001 Michael Young, author of The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), wrote in the Guardian expressing dismay about how his book had been misunderstood as positive about, rather than critical of, an ideology that justifies inequality and the rule of experts. Young’s dismay was directed at Blair. Now Theresa May envisages repeal of the 1998 ban on newly established grammar schools in order to make Britain more meritocratic. |
| In 1969, May won a place at grammar school. During her time there, her school was, like many others, reorganised under Margaret Thatcher as education secretary and became comprehensive. | In 1969, May won a place at grammar school. During her time there, her school was, like many others, reorganised under Margaret Thatcher as education secretary and became comprehensive. |
| In the mid-1960s, when at Cambridge, I made an interview study of students then at the grammar school I had attended in 1955-61. Even those who had passed the 11-plus were streamed by ability plus effort (“merit”) and the top stream had to take O-level GCEs in four, rather than five, years. Many boys in lower streams felt they were “failures”; others rebelled. “Successes” were rigidly channelled into either the sciences or the arts for the sixth form, then university. | In the mid-1960s, when at Cambridge, I made an interview study of students then at the grammar school I had attended in 1955-61. Even those who had passed the 11-plus were streamed by ability plus effort (“merit”) and the top stream had to take O-level GCEs in four, rather than five, years. Many boys in lower streams felt they were “failures”; others rebelled. “Successes” were rigidly channelled into either the sciences or the arts for the sixth form, then university. |
| In 1977 I published The Sociology of Comprehensive Schooling based upon my PhD. Among the findings was that comprehensive schools of the period were equal in performance to grammar schools in getting more able students through O-levels. Earlier this year, now retired, I was approached for the right to reissue the book in south-east Asia, where the British government looks for inspiration in remodelling our education system.Paul BellabyFormer professor, Salford University | In 1977 I published The Sociology of Comprehensive Schooling based upon my PhD. Among the findings was that comprehensive schools of the period were equal in performance to grammar schools in getting more able students through O-levels. Earlier this year, now retired, I was approached for the right to reissue the book in south-east Asia, where the British government looks for inspiration in remodelling our education system.Paul BellabyFormer professor, Salford University |
| • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com | • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com |