In the early 1970s I taught in the first year of an Essex school’s switch from secondary modern to comprehensive (Why do we laud the NHS but slate state schooling?, 9 August). This meant that every pupil from age 12 to 18 had failed the 11-plus, and that none of the 11-year-olds had taken it. The most obvious difference, aside from increased social diversity, was mood: the 11-year-olds were bubbling with confidence and enthusiasm at entering senior school; many of the older children had internalised what they saw as their failure, accepted that they were intellectually inferior and had low expectations of themselves and society.
Knowing how wrong and unfair this was, and fully supported by an inspiring headteacher, a group of parents and teachers fought for the immediate creation of a sixth form: if their children were now in a comprehensive school they were entitled to a comprehensive education. A foreigner, I was hired to teach English A- and O-levels with a working permit acquired on the basis that the sudden national demand created by the advent of comprehensive education meant that A-level teaching had become a shortage specialty.
Two years later all 14 of our English A-level candidates – every one of whom had failed the 11-plus six years earlier – got their A-level with a grade C or above, a better performance than the local surviving grammar school. Selective education is cruel, wasteful and wrong.
Marcia Heinemann Saunders
London
I believe the prime minister is mistaken in her belief that grammar schools today allow social mobility (PM’s grammar school scheme faces backlash, 8 August). My child joined our local grammar school in 2013. The school is in the London borough of Bromley where the local average house price is now £423,174, compared with the UK national average of £211,230, as disclosed by the UK House Price Index at May 2016, which confirms that local prices have increased by 46% in three years. This must be a barrier to lower income families seeking to move into the catchment area for this school.
Moreover, many of the children entering alongside my child came from independent prep schools and a high majority of them were privately tutored to pass the entrance exam. In a selective process, candidates from lower income families are competing against children who have benefited from these opportunities and so are at a further significant disadvantage.
The government must recognise that it will never be a level playing field as long as these challenges remain for the children of lower income families.
Alisa Igoe
Chislehurst, Kent
I applaud Theresa May’s focus on education. I see education as the most fundamental problem for the UK, and I believe we need to start absolutely from the premise that all education in Britain should be of the highest standard.
The controversy about grammar schools ignores the huge social divide in the UK between state and private education. The private school sector is a major cause of inequality in Britain, and it is based almost exclusively on the ability of well-heeled relatives to buy the privilege that it confers. Rab Butler could have integrated private schools into the state system in 1944 with their willing co-operation. Since then no political party has been willing to tackle this issue.
We are ruled to a disproportionate extent by the products of private education, and the evidence of their remoteness from the lives of state-educated people has been plain to see over recent decades. The huge wealth of the private school sector needs to be harnessed for the good of all, thereby supporting the PM’s ambition to allow “every child to rise as far as their talents will take them”.
Joyce Bell
Lewes, East Sussex
When I passed the 11-plus I was in a low-income, single-parent family, living on a council estate. I was failed by the local grammar school, a bastion of middle-class values. I grew to hate it, becoming a misfit. The school expelled me for truancy aged 15 before I took any O-levels. Rather than the promised leg up and social mobility, it proved a major setback.
I worked as a coalman for the next two years. I retired working as a university lecturer in spite of, rather than because of, my time at grammar school.
Andy Ashenhurst
Canterbury
The debate about grammar schools suggests it is only possible to be socially mobile, whatever that means, by going to a grammar school. I “failed” the 11-plus and went to the Richard Challoner secondary modern school in New Malden. At least six of my year of 60 pupils went on to get degrees and one of them wrote screenplays for Hollywood, lives in a huge house in Northamptonshire and has his own plane.
More seriously the whole concept of social mobility is a sterile argument. If we want a decent society we need to recognise and reward everybody’s contribution to building it in a fair way, not just a few greedy people at the top who don’t even know when they are well off.
Brian Keegan
Peterborough
If Rugby high school for girls reserves 10 places for children with lower scores who are eligible for free school meals, does that not dash the supposed life chances of 10 other pupils who did achieve the necessary marks (Grammar schools and the great social mobility debate, 9 August)? At first it sounds a laudable move but it is difficult to imagine a more effective argument for comprehensive schools.
Jim Wilson
Broughton, Oxfordshire
The debate about the benefits and downsides of grammar schools misses the point (Comprehensive schools are the true centres of excellence, 9 August). When the Butler Act was passed in 1944, it was supposed to herald the start of a tripartite system of education, involving grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools. Seventy years on, we still argue about the first two but neglect the third – despite stubbornly high levels of youth unemployment, growing skills gaps and employers repeatedly raising concerns that young people are ill-prepared for the workplace. Offering young people an education that involves on-the-job training and the development of vocational workplace skills and experience is vital to address these problems.
The last few years have seen moves in the right direction, including with the establishment of university technical colleges (UTCs) and the government’s Post-16 Skills Plan, but young people are still being told that the academic route and university is their best option for success. Too often they are given little information about technical alternatives such as the City & Guilds TechBac, a new curriculum for 14- to 19-year-olds that has been developed with employers in sectors suffering from skills gaps. From this, young people can go on to university or an apprenticeship.
Whether or not we see the establishment of new grammar schools, it is time for us to look again at the third option – offering those teenagers who want it a true system of technical education that starts them on the career ladder. With responsibility for skills now in the Department for Education, this should be a priority.
Kirstie Donnelly
Managing director, City & Guilds UK
What a good piece by Stephen Moss (Comprehensive schools are the true centres of excellence, 9 August). I hope Mrs May had time to read it. I taught in three secondary modern schools and in 1970 went in to take a remedial half 3C class of 13- to 14-year-olds. I am tall and I can be amusing, and I told the 15 assembled children what fun they were going to have with me as their English teacher; of the poems we would read and learn by heart; of the stories we would read and write and the plays we would enjoy. All the time I was performing my sales patter there was a boy straining himself with his hand in the air, desperate to speak. In the end I had compassion and said: “What is it, son?”
“You should have a proper class, Miss,” he answered, “not be teaching rubbish like us.”
I could have wept but I roared: “No class of mine is rubbish!”
That is why we need comprehensive schools.
Beverly Sissons
Eastbourne, East Sussex