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Up and down the ladder

Wednesday, 4th July 2007

 

Martin Wainwright (ex-Shrewsbury) has a piece in Comment Is Free singing the praises of  comprehensive schools. Part of me wants to agree with him, mainly because I went to a comp myself. Still, his four examples of successful ex-pupils are revealing in a different sort of way: Ed and David Miliband are the sons of a political theorist, Evan Davis's father was, as his profile points out, an electronics engineer who became a reader at Surrey University. And Zoe Heller's father was a screenwriter. Comprehensives don't necessarily hinder the progress of children from supportive, middle-class homes. Whether they're doing such a good job for everyone else is another matter.

Chris Dillow, by the way, has some typically forthright opinions on status and how to get it.

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