The benefits associated with the 1960s post-11 education system do not transfer to the current educational and social environment. The golden age of grammar schools is gone. What was once an institution for working-class social mobility has now degenerated into a “fee-pay” system.
With the advent of private tutors and “tutoring to the test” (grammar school), educational institutions for the academically gifted Secondary ModernAs more and more “less intelligent” students enter grammar schools “at the last minute” after being thoroughly crammed by private tutors, new problems will begin to affect grammar schools: the need for mixed-ability classes and more rigorous ability grouping. The impact of this will be future declines in grammar school exam results and a whole new headache in adapting education to the changing needs of new students. What was once a meritocratic education, promising an educationally challenging environment for intellectually gifted children regardless of their home background, has become a shopping-style opportunity to simply buy educational advantages for their children.
Private tutoring has become the answer for the growing upper middle class, who see it as an economic alternative to the more expensive and perhaps ideologically disliked option of private schooling. Now it seems like we can have the best of both worlds: eat your cake and keep your cake. Public education, the free movement of market forces, and the mobility of privilege can all lie in the same bed and are no longer seen as mutually exclusive. A whole new era is already upon us. And I believe the same basic philosophy of “education as savior” of our children’s future is at work here as in efforts such as academization in the less elite public sector.
One fact that is often overlooked is that the 1960s was a time of relatively universal prosperity, with far greater possibilities for social mobility than we live in today. The country's best comprehensive schools could offer everything a grammar school could, students were identified as “gifted” from an early age, special provisions were made to help such kids excel and achieve top grades, and all of this was achieved within the state system (as was the case with the ideologically correct kids of Soviet party leaders). Differentiation Between schools, What does “inclusive” mean no more?Are politicians just uncomfortable openly admitting their allegations? desire Is it so that their country's children can be better than the general population and receive a different education than the general population?
The opening up of university education to an ever-increasing number of students has dramatically changed the opportunities available to comprehensive school leavers. But market forces always seem to rear their ugly head and the old adage that there's a way to make money rings true. It seems this debate is only just starting to gain momentum.
