The great education debate

Alice Miles misses the point completely, in her comments in today's Times. Instead of looking at the issues surrounding the debate over grammar schools, she uses the opportunity to totally slag off faith schools, in what can only be described as an Alan Johnson style of attack.

In her article she states "The grammar schools are the least of the problem. There are 164 of them in the country. Compare that with an astonishing 6,848 faith schools, about a third of all the schools in England. More than 6,000 of these are primary schools, overwhelmingly Church of England or Catholic, with a smattering of Jewish (37), Methodist (26), Muslim (8) and Sikh (2). And these are used ruthlessly by the middle classes as a barely covert form of social and academic selection. This is where the campaign for a fairer education system should be focusing. "

Now, I find these types of statements highly offensive, especially the "used ruthlessly by the middle classes". Why? I hear you say. Well, as I've said before, a number of times when this subject has been raised, I live in the London Borough of Greenwich, Plumstead to be precise, which can hardly be described as middle class territory, in fact in some parts of Plumstead it's barely working class, and I send my eldest child to a CofE school, and yes it is a bloody good school. Which is a bit of a surprise when you consider how badly the Borough does in the nation league tables, but that's for another post.

Now, i'll concede that foul play may well take place in such places as Parsons Green, but to brand every faith school as being, well, "corrupt" is just shows a flagrant disregard of the results that faith schools achieve through hard work. One of the main reasons for success is that faith schools teach respect, something that even Labour Ministers admit doesn't happen in mainstream schools.

So instead of waving Alan Johnson's anti-faith school, we should instead look at why parents want to send their children to these schools, and then taking the best parts and using them to raise standards in poorer performing schools. After all, the only thing that parents care about is making sure that their child receives the best start that they can.

Also, as she finally got round to the point about grammar schools in her last paragraph, i'll pretty much do the same. One thing that I have noticed is that even though David Cameron has said that no new grammar schools will be built, he hasn't announced the closure of grammar and public schools, the Labour policy of the 70's. In fact, reading between the lines, he won't be touching existing grammar schools at all. Which makes a bit of sense, so that these new academies can be brought up to the same standard as grammar schools.

If David Cameron is allowed to continue with this policy, then it would (in theory) bring Acadamies up to standard, leave grammar schools to get on with achieving great results, and more importantly give parents a greater choice. Surely that must be a good thing.