Are grammar schools a good or a bad thing?

WHY are grammar schools considered elitist and a Tory flagship when they represent one of the finest examples of socialism ever devised: poor kids entering excellent schools because of their academic ability without cost to their parents. At our grammar school in the Fifties, my friends and I, from a deprived area, happily sat alongside the children of doctors and solicitors. It was the stigma of failure attached to the secondary moderns that was the problem. These schools should have been better equipped for a less academic and more practical curriculum. I believe in the separation at 11 only if both groups have equal status. I was a grammar pupil and eventually a comprehensive school teacher. I was shocked to discover that little had changed and comprehensive schools were being run like grammar schools with great emphasis on academic achievement. I learned the value of practical people who hadn’t passed exams but often saved our bacon. Bring back the grammar schools and separate children, but value equally those who might be mending your leaking water pipe or building your new extension.

GARETH PROTHEROE, Merthyr Tydfil. GRAMMAR schools impoverish the communities they serve by isolating 20 per cent of students in an artificial environment of academia. They deprive local community schools of the brightest 20 per cent, students who could become leaders. There is no element of ‘choice’ involved as those primary schools that strive to enable students to pass the 11-plus examination are invariably over-subscribed, leading to inflated house prices in their areas. Grammar schools are divisive and have no place in 21st-century Britain, which wants to promote social mobility, not fix it in a Dickensian model of inequality and hubris.