Grammar Schools

This cannot be true as our grammar school was closed in the 1960s by Labour.

Result: thousands were plunged into appallingly inadequate comprehensives, like the old Eastbourne Comp, without room, equipment or suitably qualified teachers, many of whom were dogmatically opposed to teaching able children to achieve their potential.

Turning the grammar into the sixth form college saved some pupils, although it had to raise students from the 11-plus level to A-levels in two years because their secondary schools had failed them so badly.

Margaret Thatcher scrapped Labour’s law that compelled authorities to close grammar schools, but Darlington council still abandoned the town’s brighter children.

An educational apartheid was born: the remaining grammar schools versus schools where all abilities were lumped together, harming them all.

We wouldn’t do that with a football team and expect good result, so why do it with children’s education?

Now Britain is desperate for skilled workers and scientists.

Little wonder, when two generations of engineers, entrepreneurs and mentors have been sacrificed to a failed ideology.

Helen McAllister, Darlington.