http://schoolsweek.co.uk/grammar-school-expansion-plans-in-at-least-ten-10-new-areas/
They are called "extensions" or "annexes" or some kind of semantic rubbish but they are grammar schools.
My mum went to Grammar School, my dad didn't - he went to Secondary Modern or technical school, but he went to University and my mum didn't, because her parents didn't even think of it. Most girls didn't and certainly not working class girls from Liverpool, maybe my dad only went because his dad had died and he had a reason to get away.
I am not suggesting that all types of education are right for everyone and shoving everyone through a system of GCSEs where there is only one level and you have to get a C or a 6 or whatever the hell it is called for anyone to give a damn or you have to get an A or an A* or a top 9 to go to the "top" universities because how else will we know if you're the right kind of person or not is wrong. But there is something going badly wrong with our education system now. The new examinations make sure that only the kind of person who can retain information (or learn facts) can pass the right kind of examination.
Alan Bennett had it right a few months ago when he said
Bennett, who was educated at a grammar school in Leeds, told an audience at Cambridge University: "Private education is not fair. Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should. And if their education ends without it dawning on them, then that education has been wasted.
"My objection to private education is simply put. It is not fair. And to say that nothing is fair is not an answer. Governments, even this one, exist to make the nation's circumstances more fair, but no government, whatever its complexion, has dared to tackle private education."
Private education, free schools, grammar schools. The only kind of education system that can make sense is to make sure that we all go to the same schools, where teachers are paid the same and have the same motivation to succeed. Not to run these schools like businesses should be a given, it does not make sense to take away a more expensive teacher because he or she is more expensive. A child who cannot achieve a grade C can still make progress and that has to have some value. If politicians' children went to the local comprehensives then would they really allow things to go on as they are?
Private education does not merely ensure that students receive the "best" education, and that is debatable, it ensures that they make the right connections, that they stay within their own circles and makes sure that the rest of stay where we are as well. The child who gets in to the grammar school on some kind of scholarship still does not have those connections, unless his or her parents can make those connections work, the sailing club, the golf course, then that child is no more likely to access those higher echelons of society than the rest of us. And what does that child have to give or lose? Cameron humiliating himself with a pig gives important people power over him, but what he gained in return; their support, their loyalty, bound up in a secret bond of trust that the rest of us cannot access is far beyond a few newspaper headlines and Charlie Brooker jokes.
This government are doing all they can to maintain the status quo not to change it, or even to revert to a simpler time - to me it sounds a little like feudal law and the middle ages.
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