Taking the English education system lying down is one of the constants of life in the UK - among others are outrageously high taxes and self-serving public health provision. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator has ruled that three grammars in Rugby cannot take pupils from nearby Northamptonshire because doing so undermines comprehensives there. Apart from wondering why the comprehensives of Northamptonshire are more deserving of protection than those of Warwickshire, there is no reason for assuming that grammar schools damage comprehensive schools that is remotely acceptable.
Grammar schools offer a curriculum and classroom environment, as well as a school ethos of commitment to academic work that is prized by parents and beneficial to pupils. Why else are pupils travelling to such schools from as much as 20 miles away daily to benefit from their competence as schools? Why don't the comprehensive schools offer the same? It is not true that only middle class children attend grammar schools, or that only the cleverest are there, or that poor people are excluded. It is outrageous that these kinds of criticisms are levelled constantly at some of the most conscientious and caring schools in the country.
Nor should one group of pupils ever be used to pull other groups along, for that is what the adjudicator's ruling that the Warwickshire schools' decision to recruit across the county boundary turned some Northamptonshire schools into "de facto secondary moderns", means. Influence can go in both directions, and denying formal schooling in the interest of social caring in a school is dereliction of the duty of a school to teach, and damages children's learning. The argument that travelling to school involves social discrimination is false too. Many children live on excellent travel routes that cross county boundaries and can access a grammar school as easily as an in-county child.
The entrance tests for grammar schools are nothing more than an attempt to ensure that children entering the school have been properly taught in their primary schools; no school, comprehensive or grammar, enjoys the two year waste of time employed in remedial teaching between the ages of eleven and thirteen, so that GCSE teaching can then begin. Again the attitude that school is a substitute for family life corrupts the purpose of school and discrimates against those children happy to learn.
If the ruling is applied nationwide ' it would have a colossal impact as a lot of youngsters go to grammar schools outside their local education authority area.' the National Grammar Schools Association said. So when are the unwanted comprehensive schools going to be required to provide the education so many parents do want and stop wasting tax payers' money, while denigrating schools that are functioning as schools rather than as childcare facilities?
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I have a spare box of matches in case any of the parents affected by this high-handed ruling wish to burn the office of the OSJ to the ground.
Boris Johnson has described the British education system as an apartheid. Those who can afford it now get a world class education remarkably similar to the sort of education that was available to millions of ordinary pupils based purely on an objective test of their ability to benefit from it. Sadly the 93% of the population get an education that stinks. The whole apparatus of which the Office of the Schools Adjudicator is a part is dedicated to asserting the fact that black is white and that Britain has a world class schools, in spite of the evidence of most internationally conducted tests.
I recommend reading a report by Alan Smithers entitled "Blair's Education - an international perspective", although I would recommend that you don't do so unless you at least start off in an upbeat frame of mind.
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