Full disclosure: I went to a boys’ grammar school (in a partially selective borough) and it is a brilliant school. Like most grammars it kind of can’t help but be so: all of its pupils enter with good Level 5s at KS2 so it’s pushing at 180 open doors every year. However, it also does a huge amount to turbo-boost these somewhat self-fulfilling prophecies through an unashamedly elite (not elitist) ethos, high expectations (it was just a given that the vast majority of us would go on to good universities) and a focus on transmitting to its pupils a breadth of academic knowledge. It’s everything a school should be (apart from the boys only bit – I like co-ed) and I am incredibly lucky to have gone there, apart from the fact that it left me with a crushing inability to chat up women (no longer a problem, of course).
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The Echo Chamber 