Sensible selection

SIR – Immediately after the Second World War, Surrey piloted a number of bilateral schools which were halfway houses between grammar and secondary modern schools (Letters, September 11).

A cohort of academically able pupils was admitted, chosen either by examination or by interview. The “grammar” streams were taught separately, but were not physically segregated from the rest of the young people in the community.

My brother and sister both attended one of these schools, which was then a beacon of excellence in a socially deprived area.

The transition from bilateral to comprehensive in the Seventies was practically seamless.

However, it was the abandonment of selective entry criteria, together with the dogma of mixed-ability teaching methods, that transformed these beacons of excellence into “bogstandard” comprehensives. Christopher Pratt Dorking, Surrey SIR – Whatever the new grammar schools turn out to be (and we know that they will be neither as the grammar school of old nor the modern “academy”), let them teach their pupils grammar. Julien Chilcott-Monk Winchester, Hampshire