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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.