Below, my column in Education Guardian today.
A few weeks ago this newspaper published a piece by Sarah Vine, Daily Mail columnist and wife of the education secretary, Micheal Gove, explaining why they had decided to send their daughter to a London state school.
It was a funny and lively article, and I agreed with just about every word. I was particularly drawn to Vine’s argument about the importance of educating students with very different interests and talents alongside one another, her belief that state schools produce more rounded, socially open citizens and her surprisingly robust criticism of the exclusivity and excessive competition of so much of the private sector.
Yet as time has gone on, Vine’s article has unsettled me. Why? Am I being irrational or ungenerous, unable to welcome even the spouse of an uncompromising Tory frontbencher over to “our” side of the educational divide?
Read the rest of the article here.
The reason that your mother and father and all of the other over privileged old money guilt tripped lefies were so keen on comprhnsivisation was because it kicked away the ladders for bright working class and lower middle class kids and retained th inter generational ongoing heirarchy: ho else to explain a nincompoop like Hilary getting into the House of Commons?
I shall let your comment stand – without reply.
The leaders of the Labour Party believe in comprehensive education: for other people’s kids: ask Harridan Harperson, Tony n Cherie, etc etc. The destruction of the grammr shools was, fairly clearly, an act of class war by the over privileged public school types like Crossman etc who just didn’t want Tarquin and Cressida to have their nepotis
The destruction of the grammar schools was clearly an act of class war by the Crossmans and Benns of this world, who did not wish to see their little tarquins and Cressidas lose their hereditary right to run the country challenged from below. The leaders of the Labour Party believ in comprehenive schools: for other people’s kids. ask harridan Harperson.