Free schools in free fall if May gets way
MY 14-year-old son goes to a free school. It was set up as “a nonselective, nondenominational school for local children”.
It achieved that by adopting a genius intake strategy based on pupils from named local feeder schools from differing socioeconomic areas, thereby creating a mixed cohort representative of society as a whole.
It is truly comprehensive – mixed classes, mixed ability, those with special educational needs, mixed socioeconomic levels, mixed races, mixed religion, boys and girls. Just like the real world.
There is no place in a fair society for selection in schools. In fact, on the Government website it actually states that free schools are “all-ability” schools, so can’t use academic selection processes like a grammar school. Free schools, when they were set up, were never meant to be a vehicle for introducing grammar schools by the back door, which is what the Prime Minister seems intent on doing. In Wednesday’s Budget, Theresa May’s intentions to educate our children in her image became crystal clear. A huge chunk of taxpayers’ money – £320million – has been siphoned off for free schools, most of which former grammar school girl Mrs May hopes will be used by parents to set up schools according to ability, thereby enabling the sharp-elbowed and well-off – who can afford extra private tuition for their kids – to jump to the head of the queue.
Surely that’s not what she meant when she said grammar schools would provide “equality of opportunity”?
The problem is the Prime Minister bases her rosy view of grammar schools on her own experience and subsequent achievements. It’s a typical Tory, Thatcherite, “If I can do it, so can anyone else” mantra.
The truth is, we are not all crafted with the same levels of intelligence or ability to pass exams.
Academic intelligence is not the be-all and end-all – in fact it blinkers some, especially in Government, from the realities of the real world.
Segregation – apartheid in education before kids have even entered the big, bad, adult world – will be detrimental to the futures of so many.
It will be disastrous for the opportunities of the already struggling white working-class boys’ group.
Swindon Academy might have the answer. Its comprehensive system includes a “grammar stream”, thereby ensuring each and every pupil is catered for, whatever their ability.
I suggest Theresa May pays a visit, because siphoning off those who are academically gifted, by tearing up the document which describes free schools as “all-ability”, will mark this Prime Minister out as the one who has riven another huge divide in our already fractured society.
We’re not all crafted with the same level of intelligence