Friends of Grammar Schools

Basil McCrea MLA, education spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party, said: “How can the Education Minister not see what an excellent education system we already have when she looks at these results?
“They should make her think again about her plan to outlaw academic selection from Northern Ireland.”

By Kathryn Torney, Education Correspondent, ktorney@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

702 words        Publication date: 21 August 2009

Source: Belfast Telegraph         Page: 22

(c)2009 Independent News & Media (Northern Ireland). All Rights Reserved.

News | Frantic scramble begins for university places and jobs

IT will be tragic if students who received their A-level results yesterday are not rewarded with a place … Continue Reading

Publication date: 10 August 2009

Source: The Independent          Page: 30,31

(c) 2009 Independent & Media PLC

Comment | You ask the questions: Michael Gove, Tory spokesman for children, schools and families

Why does no one advocate introducing proper grammar school-style education into top streams in comprehensives? This should keep the grammar school brigade happy and, because children develop at different rates, avoid the pitfalls of the old two-tier system with selection based on one exam. And are you going to raise the bar for entry in to the teaching profession? We should demand a 2.1 or better for secondary-level teachers, as in Finland. Depending … Continue Reading

“Before those institutions were all but wiped out by the legislation of an earlier Labour Government, the grammar schools outclassed the independent sector in terms of their academic results”

Dominic Lawson    1280 words

Publication date: 11 August 2009          Source: The Independent

Page: 22,23      (c) 2009 Independent & Media PLC

Comment

I think it’s called cognitive dissonance. The front page story of this weekend’s Sunday Times was headlined: “Mandelson to favour poorer pupils”. It revealed that the First Secretary of State was considering plans to request universities to set preferential lower entry standards for the least well-off; but the photograph accompanying this scoop was of … Continue Reading

“Grammar schools were the great lever by which children from disadvantaged homes could be lifted to the ranks of the academic elite.”

Mary Warnock    824 words

Publication date: 29 July 2009   Source: The Independent

Page: 29,28      (c) 2009 Independent & Media PLC

Comment:

LORD MANDELSON, himself an Oxford graduate from a maintained school, has raised the old cry: down with elitism, pull apart the ivory towers. The word “university” does not feature in the title of his department, BIS (Business, Innovation and Skills, in case anyone has forgotten), and it’s not surprising, given the depth of ignorance and misunderstanding of the universities shown by … Continue Reading

“IN THE Fifties and Sixties when I was at school, most Oxbridge entrants came from State schools. That’s because we had brilliant grammar schools. Today, private schools dominate because they get by far the best A-level results. So much for equality.”

Chris Roycroft

Davies Political commentator    871 words

Publication date: 29 July 2009   Source: The Daily Express

Page: 12           (c) 2009 Express Newspapers

LEADER

HELLO and welcome to a pecial edition of University Challenge, with teams drawn from the Labour Party. Over to Jeremy Paxman: “Here’s your starter for 10, no conferring: Which politician set a target that 50 per cent of school-leavers should … Continue Reading

“Grammars did help to move a few people from close to the bottom to the very top and Labour’s abolition of most such schools is one factor behind the continued private-school domination of Oxbridge and key professions.”

David Goodhart            2116 words

Publication date: 26 July 2009   Source: The Sunday Times

Page: 2             (c) 2009 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

Last November America elected not just a black president but also a leader who is the son of a single mother who was, at least briefly, dependent on food stamps. All very well … but it couldn’t have happened here, said the … Continue Reading

“The golden age for social mobility was the era of the grammar schools: before their abolition, more students from state school entered Oxford and Cambridge than from private schools.”
654 words        Publication date: 21 July 2009

Source: The Evening Standard  Page: 14

(c) 2009 Associated Newspapers. All rights reserved

THE report by the former health secretary, Alan Milburn, into social mobility which is published today contains a bold bid for mass appeal: its claim that the middle classes are being excluded from the professions. The report also recommends that the state should be a surrogate pushy parent, by raising the aspirations of children whose … Continue Reading

State schools have been wrecked and now it is the turn of our best universities, says Simon Heffer

By Simon Heffer

1270 words

Publication date: 22 July 2009

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Page: 16

(c) 2009 Telegraph Group Limited, London

The Department of the Bleeding Obvious is one of the most cash-hungry in government. It employs politicians and bureaucrats at huge expense to inquire into the failings of society, and discuss how they might be put right. It has just published another report, of an inquiry led by Alan Milburn, the former cabinet minister, into the lack of social mobility for the lower classes. Various reasons are … Continue Reading

“Mr Milburn advocates that the state should “act as a surrogate pushy parent” to children from deprived backgrounds. Which, of course, is exactly what it did under the old grammar school system.”

Source: Telegraph Online

Author: Janet Daily

(c) … Continue Reading

THE MELANIE PHILLIPS COLUMN

Selective education is the single most effective vehicle ever devised for propelling poor children out of disadvantage. Destroying the grammar schools not only trapped poor children within their impoverished backgrounds.

1280 words      Publication date: 20 July 2009

Source: Daily Mail        Page: 14

(c) 2009 Associated Newspapers. All rights reserved

THE Government’s ’social mobility czar’, Alan Milburn, is due to tell us all this week how class barriers can finally be broken down.

According to the advance spinning, his report will say that the rate of access to top jobs by people from disadvantaged backgrounds has got slower.

Apparently, the former Cabinet minister … Continue Reading