Grammar schools should come back – they were abolished for the wrong reasons

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The government is considering repealing the ban on grammar schools (Getty)

I am reminded of the words of my wonderfully bluff director of education at Hull University over 40 years ago. Said Prof Tom Bamford in his thick Yorkshire accent: “Don’t go runnin’ away with the idea that grammar schools were got rid of because they were a failure. Grammar schools were got rid of ’cause they were too much of a success.”

Edward Thomas
Eastbourne

If we want educational reform, we need to ban private schools

It is easy to believe that the grammar school system set up under the 1944 act was socially just, but even decades ago it was corrupted by parents paying for private education at primary level to get a free academic education at secondary school. The IQ test of course was flawed because its inventor cooked the books, but these private schools made sure pupils had loads of practice for it.

I passed my 11-plus in 1959. My year had a whole contingent from a local private school; and in the early Seventies I taught in one such school in west London. The system ran just like feeder prep schools for the grander public schools.

Pushy parents will always win so long as private education remains lawful.

Colin Yarnley
Southwell

My comprehensive school helped me to gain many skills

Grammar schools have been back in the news again. Every government feels entitled to play with the education system: after all everyone’s been to a school so everyone’s an expert, right?

Sadly, it’s children’s lives we’re playing with. I went to an underachieving comprehensive school in Coventry and was always one of the highest-achieving students. Unsurprisingly I got good grades and went to a Russell Group university. I would have been a prime candidate for grammar schools.

Had I have attended one, I would have missed out on the wealth of knowledge opportunities my underachieving comprehensive school provided. Not only was I was able to support others learning, I also learnt that being smart isn’t everything: being funny, kind and culturally open is also important. I learnt that grades aren’t everything, with some of my “underachieving” friends being fluent in languages I had barely heard of. I made it an extracurricular activity to learn how to say hello and varying expressions from numerous languages that have helped me travel the world as much as my GCSE Spanish did.

More importantly, many of those “underachieving” kids also ended up getting degrees and getting good jobs in no small part because the cultural values of being aspirational and seeing education as the way to progress were key to all of the largely second generation immigrant children (me included) I went to school with. We were very much Blair’s generation and educationally at least, we benefited from this.

It is for these reasons the Government’s plans for the reintroduction of the grammar school are wrong and should be resisted by all.

Ainsley Henn
Address provided

The EU holds the trump card in the Brexit negotiations

All those misguided Brits who are trying to persuade the PM to guarantee the rights of EU citizens to remain in the UK without a quid pro quo and to spell out her strategy over Brexit are doing their best to undermine what is already a very poor hand. David Cameron failed to extract any meaningful concessions from the EU when they called his bluff over Brexit thinking he would win the referendum and Cameron actually had a much stronger hand. We might have several jokers in the Cabinet with wildly differing views on what Brexit should mean but all the jokers (not to mention all the trump cards) in the pack are in the EU’s hand. Persuading Ms May to place all her cards face up on the table as an opening gambit is the height of stupidity.

Roger Chapman
Keighley

We must let people be laid to rest with the respect they deserve

Next Wednesday, MPs will be debating funeral poverty. There is such a need to support Quaker Social Action’s (QSA) “Fair funeral campaign”.

The aim is to get funeral directors to publish their charges as bereaved relatives feel the perceived stigma of not being able to provide a good send off, leading to massive debts. The campaign has tried to encourage everyone concerned to deal with the issue of the cost of dying. Funeral debt runs to hundreds of millions of pounds and bereaved people face the stress not only of burying loved ones, but the cost that comes with it.

There is a real chance that there can be change, I am grateful for the support from QSA to help me arrange my mum’s cremation earlier this year. They took away so much of my stress. I cannot thank them enough.

I hope readers and MPs will wholeheartedly support this campaign and give it the publicity it deserves.

Gary Martin
London, E17

Spit hoods are there to protect police offices

Martha Spurrier states that spit hoods do not belong in a civilised society but unfortunately those who bite and spit in police officers’ faces are not behaving like members of a civilised society. Why therefore do they have to be considered first before front line workers like the police, A&E and ambulance staff?

Sadly there will always be abuse of position as far as a few police officers are concerned but that is not a reason not to offer some form of protection to all those who have to deal with these uncivilised people. They have the choice not to bite and spit, the above personnel who have to deal with them do not often have warning before getting an eye or a mouthful of possibly infected spittle. I speak as a nurse who had it happen to me in A&E many times, so show a little thought to civilised people just trying to do their jobs.

C K Younis
London