CHEERS and sobs met the publication on August 13th of A-level results, the school-leaving scorecards that tell British 18-year-olds whether they have made the grades required to get into university. As ever, many of the most successful schools in the state sector were grammars, which select pupils on the basis of their academic ability. Grammars’ supporters see them as engines of social mobility, pointing out that they educated five consecutive prime ministers between 1964 and 1997. Detractors argue that their benefits accrue mainly to the middle class, rather than the poor (less than 3% of grammar-school students are hard-up enough to get free school meals, compared with 16% of pupils across the state sector).
The critics had the better of the argument in the 1960s and 70s, when most grammar schools were converted to non-selective comprehensives. From a peak of 1,298 in England and Wales in 1964, only 163 grammars remain, all in England, with a high concentration in the south-east. (Northern Ireland has a further 69.) No new one has opened since Labour banned their creation in 1998, a position that the ruling Conservatives support, albeit with some...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, From grammars to crammers
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