Bright pupils failed by their feckless parents
HAvING been at school during the Fifties and Sixties, and taught for 40 years in junior schools in Maidstone, with its four grammar schools — two for boys and two for girls — I feel that there is one difference between the old system and the current one, which means there is less social mobility than there used to be. When I was at school, every child took the 11-plus (and I saw the difference it made to the less privileged), but today in Kent, parents need to fill in forms to enter their children for this exam. As a teacher, I saw a number of bright, underprivileged children not being entered because their parents could not be bothered. They simply didn’t value educational achievement. The advantage of grammar schools for those children is not just the quality of education. It is the separation from the unambitious, and often antieducation, culture of many deprived areas that is important.
ROBiN CROSS, Maidstone, Kent. WITH regard to the question of selective schooling, the irony is that if it were a question of sporting talent, there would be far less controversy at the idea of children receiving special recognition. It is only academic talent that faces this opposition. We can’t cope with bright children in this country any more, it seems. victor Serebriakoff, a Hungarian immigrant, helped to found Mensa. Writing in the early Fifties, he described the British educational system as being like the Greek myth of the Bed of Procrustes, with the ‘occupants’ being stretched or crushed to fit, irrespective of the harm or injury done. This has a considerable effect on this country’s ability to produce a skilled workforce and compete effectively in the global marketplace. The former prime minister of Singapore, Dr Lee Kuan Yew, once described how one of the most important factors in his nation’s rise in status in the world was a memo he sent out shortly after assuming power in 1959, instructing all the schools, colleges and universities to ensure that their brightest students had the resources and opportunities to develop at their own speed. The success of this enlightened policy seems all too obvious.
PeteR DAVey, Bournemouth.