Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
It’s simply doing the best with the system we’ve got
Rosie Duffield found herself in a media storm for sending her children to a grammar school while denouncing the selective system. Education expert says she was entirely right to do so, but social media pundit says it has exposed the MP’S naivety
Ifind the criticism of a Labour Member of Parliament living in the selective county of Kent for sending her children to grammar school quite bizarre, especially as no alternatives are offered by her critics.
What follows is not, I believe, a political view but one that is purely pragmatic.
In Canterbury, where this issue has arisen, 30% of the state school population go to grammar schools at the age of 11, well over the county standard of 25%.
So, even the technically comprehensive church schools will have a limited number of children assessed to be of grammar school ability at that age, even assuming that a school whose philosophy is underpinned by faith is an option.
Whatever parents’ views on the principle of selective education, they still have a parental responsibility to do their best for their children within the system that operates locally. It would surely be perverse not to send an able child, assessed to be of grammar school ability, to the school best suited for their abilities.
Certainly, when I was a grammar school head teacher I had children in my care whose parents disagreed strongly with the selective system, including Labour politicians.
This did not present a problem for them or for me, as we all agreed that given this was the system, even though they would have it abolished, mine was the most appropriate school for those children.
It is clear after two general elections in which the only discussion about grammar schools from any party was about the possibility of expanding numbers, that there is no general appetite for a break-up of the selective system where it exists, especially with the greatest divide in education receiving no mention whatever.
For it has always been a mystery to me why the Left in politics never refers to the biggest fault line – that between state and private schools – with the country’s private sector demonstrably undermining social mobility without being challenged. Many academically selective private schools, benefiting from historic and private funding sources along with impressive tax breaks and “old boy” networks, offer future life prospects for those able to afford them, that areas without grammar schools cannot hope to emulate. The Canterbury Labour MP is not the only local parent to be publicly pilloried for expressing opinions on this matter, oddly perhaps in a university city that should create a climate of encouraging tolerance and rational debate. However, she should surely not be criticised, nor her children brought into the public domain, for choosing the most appropriate state education option for her children. Also, strangely, I doubt given the experience of a number of other Labour MPS, that she would have been equally vilified for sending her children to the alternative local option, one of Canterbury’s three private schools.
Peter Read is a Kent-based education adviser and former head teacher. Visit www. kentadvice.co.uk