“Bring back Grammar schools,” goes the cry. The prime minister has plans. Lord have mercy.
“Bring back Secondary Moderns,” goes the cry. Well, presumably. You can’t have one without the other.
I went to a grammar school in the 1950s. I feel very ambivalent about this. Mother left school at 12. Father left school at 15. Both were working class, both were quick and clever – and both got no real education, no qualifications. A crying shame. They prayed that this would not happen to me. The post-war dream was breaking. It was 1956. We had the 11-plus.
A miniscule percentage of paupers could succeed nd go to a rarefied grammar school and change class and culture forever. I somehow passed. I still don’t know how. I could spell “necessary” and “accommodate”, knew conditional tenses, could recall with tedious accuracy what I did on my holidays, and differentiate between vegetables and fruit – but I was well nigh innumerate.
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