"Grammars do not improve standards in other local schools"

Generally, the letter reflected the rather complacent received wisdom in Trafford on selective education, despite the unanimous evidence-based conclusion of education experts that academic selection at the age of 11 is detrimental to social mobility and individual pupils’ confidence and future prospects.

More specifically, much has changed since the 1970s, when the system was even more divisive as O Level and CSE qualifications steered grammar and secondary pupils towards very different careers.

Selection methods have never guaranteed 'suitable' streaming, but actively disadvantage countless 'borderline' pupils on both sides of the divide.

Statistics prove that the latest tests somehow favour middle-class children, unsurprisingly given the strenuous efforts of many of their parents in pursuit of grammar places, of which the writer seems cheerfully unaware.

Although the current debates are a useful distraction from the EU referendum result and the lack of any Brexit strategy, they should nonetheless prompt local reviews of publicly-funded education, for the benefit of all children.

Grammars do not improve standards in other local schools: the cherry-picking of the more academic students necessarily reduces the number of higher achievers in other schools and increases their proportion of unwilling learners, making their task all the harder.

Nostalgia and longevity are insufficient justifications for this anachronistic and divisive system.

Sadly though, I am sure that it will continue to prove overwhelmingly popular with those who would otherwise be contemplating expensive private education.

Julie Probert
Altrincham