‘We are all born With different skills, talents and abilities’

I suspect social mobility in some of the top performing comprehensive schools in England is at best no better than our grammar schools in Kent and similar barriers exist.

Take Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, in Canterbury, where 55% of sixth form students come from a home where no adult went to university, and where 22% of students live in communities that are among the 40% most deprived.

Yet 45% of students went to Russell Group universities and 15-20 students each year from a cohort of 500 sixth form students go to Oxbridge.

Remarkably, in addition to this, 1% of UK nationals studying physics went to this school.

Recently in Kent, a crossparty working group of county councillors set about examining social mobility within grammar schools.

The findings and recommendations, which were endorsed by our county council, endeavour to reduce barriers to social mobility. It will particularly support those children who are experiencing the hardships of poverty to enter grammar schools.

Grammar schools do an excellent job stretching the most academically able. We are