The last time that I checked, the Conservative Party had an overall majority in the House of Commons.
That there will be few or no new grammar schools, institutions that have just been found to serve the brightest pupils far less well than do comprehensives, is not the fault, if fault it be, of any other party.
Questions about where politicians sent their own children to school ought therefore to be directed primarily, not to members of the Shadow Cabinet, but to parliamentarians of the governing party.
People who truly believed, in defiance of all evidence, that the grammar schools were the ladders of aspiration, ought to ask why their expansion had been blocked by Conservative MPs with children at them, or at private schools, or what have you.
The Conservatives have always had an entirely free pass on this.
The most interventionist and interfering politicians in relation to the state education system have never been asked about the fact that they either opted out of it altogether, or, as in the case of Michael Gove, managed to remain within it while entirely avoiding their own flagship policies.
But Theresa May has invested a lot in grammar schools. They are her bridge to her own party's activist base. It was either grammar schools or capital punishment, so be grateful for small mercies.
When the new grammar schools failed to materialise even after the ban had been lifted (and there was no such ban for the first 40 of the 50 years that no one has attempted to set up a grammar school), then the grossly overdue questions really will have to be asked.
No comments:
Post a Comment