Try levelling the playing field

BBC researchers had discovered that many kids who pass the 11+ have been coached and many kids at Grammar schools come from middle class backgrounds. Now I don't want to knock the researchers but this is a bit like discovering grass is green. Had they bothered to ask they would also have found that there are a disproportionate number of children of Asian origin because the Indian subcontinent still puts great store by a good education.

This, I can hardly call it a revelation, by the BBC has been like a prod with a sharp stick to the PC and equality brigade with grammar schools once more indicted as middle class elitist institutions designed to maintain and strengthen the class system and so on.

Sadly, if the critics opened their other eye, they might just realise that it is not the grammar schools that are denying kids from working class and poor backgrounds the chance of a grammar school education but the politicians, local authorities and even teachers who ban any coaching or 11+ exam tuition in primary schools.

Thus thousands of kids whose parents either don't care, can't afford or have no idea how to find coaching enter into an exam without even having seen a paper or knowing the format of the questions. Ask those who ban exam preparation if they would have liked to have taken a driving test without having driven a car beforehand.

The answer is not a scorched earth policy on grammar schools but just a recognition that if kids from poor backgrounds are going to take the 11+ then it might just be an idea to level the playing field a bit and give them some idea of what the paper looks like and the sort of questions they might be asked. If people really care about equality instead of some intellectual social agenda then a bit of coaching might just be a start.