Schools for success
From Barnaby Lenon
Sir: Robert Yates rightly explains that grammar schools were the path to academic success and a good job for clever working-class children in the period 1935 to 1975 (‘Grammar schools are liberal, Mr Cameron’, 3 June). To these should be added the many direct-grant schools, independent schools that charged fees but took clever children from low-income homes on local authority grants. They were the most successful schools in Britain academically and of course had children from a wide range of social backgrounds. For example, in south London, a relatively low-income area, these included such schools as Dulwich College, Eltham College and the Whitgift Foundation schools.
Following the decision to move to comprehensive schools in the 1970s, most of the grammar schools were destroyed. The direct-grant schools lost the local authority grant and could take only fee-payers but, unlike the grammar schools, these schools still exist, and they are still among our most successful schools. A quarter of their pupils are on reduced fees, using funds which the schools themselves have raised. The Asian population of our larger cities is particularly benefiting from their traditional high standards of teaching. They are independent schools and they provide opportunities for social mobility which the state system seems to be incapable of offering. This is another interesting fact which Mr Cameron might think about.
Barnaby Lenon
Head Master, Harrow School,
Middlesex
From Col. John Wilson
Sir: Robert Yates makes a proper case for grammar schools. But working-class children will not reach that stage unless they start well. My late wife was an infant teacher for over 30 years and understood the importance of the nursery/reception classes in state first schools. She knew that many of the children at Woodlands First School in Salisbury came from poorly socialised ‘families’. The first task was to create an atmosphere that encouraged good behaviour. Until this was done, formal teaching was useless, even counterproductive. Reception departments should be the first priority, as the dedicated staff at Woodlands School have shown over many years.
John Wilson
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Roy’s rural ride
From Charles Jackson
Sir: While enjoying Roy Hattersley’s bucolic rhapsodies (Life, 3 June) and wishing him well in his village Arcadia, I was reminded of those contemporary architects who proselytise modernism but opt to live in mellow Georgian rectories.
As one of the leading architects of the Left’s policies on (inter alia) crime, education and housing which over the past 40 years, we are assured, have been so successful, it is odd that Roy apparently now wishes to move out and settle in the Tory shires. Presumably, too, Labour voters in inner-city Birmingham will be gratified to hear that he dismisses their environment as ‘decaying’, especially when they recall that an entrenched Labour establishment has enjoyed almost untrammelled power there since the war.
Still, it is good that a few can still enjoy the traditional English country life, even if the masses are necessarily excluded. Might Roy even be persuaded to lend his support to his local hunt?
Charles Jackson
Hyssington, Montgomery
Wales
Tolerance of the Kurds
From James Blount
Sir: Charles Moore worries, with some justification, about the vulnerability of Christians in such places as Iraq (The Spectator’s Notes, 3 June). He would have been pleased, though, to have met, as I did a week ago, the head of the security agency of one of the three governorates that loosely form the current Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Proudly displayed behind the desk of this devout and influential Muslim was a recent photograph of the Pope, which bore inscriptions thanking the officer for his interventions on behalf of Christian communities inside and outside the Kurdish-administered territories and offering various Marian blessings.
While this evidence of the reach of the Holy See is impressive, more reassuring still is the confirmation that the Kurdistan Region, almost the only success story of this troubled war of liberation, remains not only a haven of tolerance and sense but also a proactive force for good beyond its de facto borders.
I should add that at lunch a few days later, with a Kurdish family of some standing, one of the more distinguished and cherished guests was a Kurdish Jew.
James Blount
Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Good news for Dugganites
From Anthea Morton-Saner
Sir: Allan Massie’s advocacy of Alfred Duggan (Books, 3 June) is greatly welcomed. As Duggan’s recently retired literary agent, I can assure Mr Massie that several of the novels should no longer be out of print. Phoenix Press (which took over from Cassell Military Paperbacks) are reissuing them. About six should be available now, with the remaining titles scheduled. Sadly, his wonderful history of the intrigues of the Angevin court, Devil’s Brood, is not on the list to be reprinted.
Anthea Morton-Saner
Bicester, Oxfordshire
Wind instrument
From Dennis Morris
Sir: Christopher Caldwell in his piece ‘Why I, as an American, love the French’ (27 May) says, ‘Little of [French] wit involves breaking wind on trains.’ Perhaps so. But may I remind him that there was, in the late 19th or early 20th century, a very popular French variety artist whose speciality was to break wind in syncopation with the orchestra.
Dennis Morris
Cascais, Portugal
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