On “Today” this morning, there was an item about a Tory pressure group that wants their next manifesto to promise more grammar schools. After a brief but very clear rebuttal by Chris Husbands, there followed an interview at some length with Graham Brady, MP for one of the Trafford constituencies and long-time grammar school advocate.
His premise was that Trafford has a wonderful, high achieving system, grammar schools are a route to social mobility taking all kinds of kids and the secondary moderns too are all great schools. Predictably, Today had done no research so was in no position to challenge his bland and deeply misleading generalisations.
First of all, some basic data about Trafford secondary schools. In 2013, just 9% of pupils were classified as having low key stage 2 scores, 45% were mid-range and 46% had high scores. This is one of the highest scoring intakes in the…
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The Echo Chamber 