brennon

Take every paint pot you can find in your garage and I know there are at least a dozen different ones (there's 30 odd in mine!) pour them all in to a bucket and mix - what do you get? 

Well, that of course depends on the actual colours and the amounts used, but in most cases you'll get a muddy looking non-colour that is not much use for anything, you certainly wouldn't want to use it for any important jobs.  What is he on about now? I hear you cry!  Well, (starting a sentence with well again - it's that comprehensive education again!)  I'm using this rather poor analogy to represent what can happen when you take kids of wildly varying abilities (colours) throw them in to the same class (pot) and stir; which leads me on to the subject of my latest whinge. 

The renewed attack on grammar schools by 50+ labour MPs, as highlighted in an earlier entry, has disappeared from the front pages, but not from their agenda I'm sure.  The damage to the education of bright pupils, who have been denied access to the type of education that would be available via a selection system, is confirmed in a report in today's Daily Telegraph  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547591/Bright-pupils-'dragged-down'.html

To date, I haven't had anybody come back to me to explain how the existance of grammar schools dis-advantage those being educated in secondary or comprehensive schools (you know I've never been able to figure out the difference - must be something to do with my sub-standard comprehensive school education).  However, this story seems to offer some evidence that the lack of access to a grammar school really does screw things up for some kids!