Don't believe everything your mates tell you!

I was rather enjoying Boris Johnson’s typically spirited defence of academic selection, on egalitarian grounds, until I happened upon this rather puzzling sentence,

“I know a lawyer from Belfast, a man of my age, who believes fervently that he would never have gone to university had it not been for the grammar school system, and who cannot believe that no one – no one from any party – is objecting to their abolition at the hands of, yes, Martin McGuinness.”


No-one, other than Boris’ own Conservative colleagues in Northern Ireland, their Ulster Unionist partners, the DUP and a coalition of parents and schools spanning the maintained and voluntary sectors.

Comments

CR said…
The idea that academic selection and grammar schools have led to great social mobility in Northern Ireland is a bit of a myth, out of the total number of pupils from lower income families that made it to university in Northern Ireland in recent years only about 25% actually came from grammar schools, the other 75% came from secondary schools and further education colleges, i.e. the pupils who the system deemed not to be “academic”.
20 April 2009 at 17:37
Anonymous said…
CR

That is due to the lowering fo standards to a chronic level.
20 April 2009 at 18:43
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