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The Price Of Perfection
How did four grammar schools with "near-perfect" results end up listed as being among the 100 worst schools in Britain, according to the government's new league tables?
The answer's in the question. Clue one: "grammar schools", those selective centres of academic excellence successive British governments (and Conservative oppositions) have deemed anachronistic. Government - and Labour governments in particular - have a mighty grudge against grammar schools, despite evidence that social mobility in Britain began to grind to a halt, oh, around the same time that grammars began to be abolished.
Clue two: "The government's new league tables." How could a dodgy bunch of ideology-obsessed fiddlers resist creating a new set of criteria to judge schools? Back in your correspondent's day, all but the poshest schools were judged on academic excellence and sporting prowess.
21st century children, according to the latest tables, win points for diversity (ethnic mainly, but also the ratio of boys to girls and how deprived the area they're based in is.
So a school with poor results which draws its pupils from a desolate housing estate is judged less harshly than a grammar in a middle-class area, filled with the Aryan children of pushy bourgeois parents.
There may be something in this, if you believe that it's more difficult for an underprivileged child from a rough area to achieve A-grades than his counterpart in leafy stockbrokers' belt. It's something to bear in mind, though: Not something you can actually base ranks on, unless those ranks are politically motivated.
EURSOC imagines a Labour-managed Premier League Football table, with points awarded not for wins and draws, but on the diversity of teams and whether or not the fans filling each stadium are poor.
The National Grammar Schools Association says that the rankings are "pure propaganda to undermine good performance".
According to the Telegraph, "Last year a similar, value-added table, which judged the progress between 11 and 14 without taking account of poverty, put grammars among the top in the country."
