Time to change policy on new grammars

Baroness Shirley Williams, who died recently, was a decent, kindly woman, who unfortunately typified the naive liberals who do so much unintended damage. On foreign policy she was an advocate of nuclear disarmament, ignoring the fact that their possession by the major powers has prevented a conventional conflict on the scale of the two word wars. On Europe she was in favour of transferring effective governance of the UK from elected representatives at Westminster to Brussels bureaucrats, an error that has now thankfully been corrected.

As far as domestic policies are concerned she, together with Richard Crossman, both of whom attended private, fee paying, educational establishments, was responsible for the attack upon grammar schools, the means by which working class children, including myself, were able to climb the ladder of educational achievement. The results of this policy are with us still, the gradual decline in standards being obvious, now cumulating in a university declaring that it was not necessary for undergraduates to know how to spell, or to use grammar correctly. Such pupils in my generation would not have gained sufficient A levels to win a place at any university.

Fortunately for youngsters in Kent the destruction of the grammar schools was not universal, so some can still benefit from their existence, and, for the sake of children across the country, it is time that the policy of preventing the creation of such schools was reversed. Colin Bullen