Like David Cameron I am the parent of a child with a disability, one that also gives a mild learning difficulty.  I have listened carefully and read much of the arguments of the supporters of selective schools in the public sector. The supporters of grammar schools continue to forget that it is not just the high acheivers we need to look after, but also those who will be low achievers unless they are given the environment and the support to reach their full potential.
At the local secondary school my child has been systematically bullied, has been sexually harassed, finds it hard to make friends and though the staff work hard, there are not the right specialist teachers; to ensure my child’s potential is fulfilled. Surely every child has a success story to live, how will a grammar school system help my child? How will it help anyone, as selection is also isolation, you may create a high achiever but not a rounded personality.

When we have a school system, similar to that we have to day, that is only focussed on targeted academic achievement, an enhanced version of this system; is also used as an argument for grammar schools, we begin to forget the rounded personal development of the individual and then our education system creates vast problems for parents, teachers and pupils alike. We can see those problems in our schools: rampant bullying, producing a culture of violence that has escalated to carrying and killing with knives; a lack of respect for adults and authority, because adults are seen as not practising what they preach (we only have to look to the lies and war mongering of our politicians for that) immense pressure to succeed academically and ultimately unhappiness and alienation. A system that pressures children at school putting them under unnatural stress to achieve from a very early age, does not benefit us. This educational ideology may train children that 12 hour days at work signify success, but the stress and subsequent illness we see in both adults and children these days is the fall out and the cost.
At the beginning of New Labour it was said that Blair stole the Conservative clothes, but what he really did was take the Tory cloth and tailor a new suit that had much Tory styling but always attempted an humane cut. The Conservatives under David Cameron are now left with the idea of a new suit of their own, I hope it is neither the & emperors new clothes nor the old Tory styling whose arrogant, uncaring and inhumane cut has alienated the British people for so long.

Conservatives cannot go back to the days when they lacked an holistic social view or a caring outlook, Conservatives can only look forward.  Labour has managed to brand conservatism in the negative, but the positive sense at the root of the word conserve  is ‘to keep in safety and protect from harm, decay, loss, or destruction’, this is something that everyone needs and wants, not just a select few.

Technorati Tags: education, Grammar schools, selection

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