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Blair To Step In To Grammar Schools Debate?
I take most things I read in the Sunday Life with a pinch of salt but this is some claim to be making. Apparently David McNarry of the UUP has been to Downing Street twice in the last 2 weeks and believes Tony Blair is about to step in and save Ulster's grammar schools.
Mr McNarry is quoted as saying "Having spoken to him, I am very confident the Prime Minister will halt the plans to end academic selection. I will be surprised and very disappointed if he does not."
Follow up:
Personally I will be surprised (although very pleased) if TB does step into the Fray. Angela Smith, the NIO minister also responsible in no small part for the Maze farce, ruled out retaining academic selection no less than 9 days prior to yesterday's publication of this article.
I just hope the rumours are true and Tony has actually grown a pair sufficient enough in size to overrule Ms Smith, otherwise her record in Northern Ireland will go from embarrassing to devastating.
I've stressed time and again the importance of Grammar Schools in giving people from less-well-off backgrounds access to the highest standard of education - thereby increasing social mobility. Having been a product of the grammar school system myself, and of the belief that had my school gone private I would have been unable to afford it, I can't help but feel dismayed that the system to which I owe so much is being misused as some political football by an egalitarian with a misguided agenda. After all, it's not the working class children who will benefit from a comprehensive system - it's the rich kids who won't have to go to school with those rowdies & hallions from the dirty council estate down the road.
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3 comments
It has caused more damage to most of our children, than it has helped.
Parental snobbery is the main reason.
I can imagine a few of the 'top' grammar schools might go private, which is fine.
But the large majority of children will go to, what will be, comprehensive schools, wear the same uniforms, and be 'streamed' within those schools, cutting out all reasons for snobbery by parents.
A side benefit will be that our children will be free to play football, at these schools, and not be forced, again for snobbish reasons, to play rugby.
I can at least accept there may be grounds to look into the process whereby academic selection is carried out, but basically what academic selection does is allow smart kids who, under the English system, wouldn't be able to afford the good schools and reach their full potential, have access to the best education.
When the grammar schools go private, all that will be left is secondary schools. That's not a comprehensive education. That's just dividing children by how much money they have rather than their academic aptitutde. You think that will reduce snobbery?
What it will reduce is the number of kids from less-well-off backgrounds going on to university. Why else do you think more people go to uni in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK?
Agree with you on the football thing though. My school was allowed you to play football, but only after school. Meanwhile we all had to spend at least a term in each of the first three years playing rugby. But that's really a side issue.
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