Letter: Choice of schools

Sir: Your leading article argues that secondary selection is marginal to the key issue of quality and standards.

From a national perspective this might appear persuasive, since 150-odd selective schools could just about be seen as making a contribution to overall diversity, but locally the picture is very different.

In Kent, selective schools are not a contribution to diversity, but the core feature of the whole system. Education in the county still revolves around the selection process, on the manifestly absurd assumption that 25 per cent of children are "academic" and 75 per cent are not, and that therefore different kinds of school are needed for them at 11-plus.

It is because education in Kent is so much out of step with the national mainstream, with the selective system promoting inequitable resourcing, failure to produce all-through quality and huge problems of staff recruitment, that the debate here is likely to be intense.

Opponents of secondary selection here want the high-quality, all-ability and diverse secondary schools which most of the rest of the country already enjoys.

The Reverend JOHN CAPERON

Head Teacher, Bennett Memorial Diocesan School

Tunbridge Wells, Kent