On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday . Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Remarkably the hottest temperature on record in Macon is 39.8C, in (when else) August 2003. That will be broken this year.
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
America is throwing $50 billion at chip-makers as part of its $280 billion Chips & Science Act. China and South Korea are also throwing tens if not hundreds of billions at their own semiconductor sectors. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/us_chips_act_vs_world/
China is said to have already invested $80 billion of a planned $150 billion in government subsidies in its bid to become the global leader in all segments of the semiconductor industry by 2030. South Korea last year announced a package of investments worth over $450 billion for its chip industry, with its eyes also on becoming a global supply chain leader.
Elsewhere, the EU announced the first €11 billion (about $11.2 billion) investment as part of its European Chips Act earlier this year, which is expected to grow to more than €43 billion (about $44 billion) by 2030.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
First Poll with fieldwork entirely after Picket Gate
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton · 4h Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
Nobody in the real world gives a fuck about “picket gate”.
People care if Lab is on the side of workers or not
How would you know about the real world?
Most people don't think union people are workers. Because so few people are in unions. That's a bad thing btw.
Real people can empathize with workers taking a stand and not being prepared to take massive real term pay cuts in a COL crisis and can see SKS is not on their side.
Ben Pointer apparently agrees real people dont give a fuck I am surprised at Ben not so much at CHB
...about "Picket Gate"!
No one gives a shit about the Labour internal squabble.
As it happens, I think Starmer has got this one wrong but the vast majority of voters won't notice. The only people getting worked up about it are those on the left who see Starmer's Labour as the real enemy, when they should of course be focused on kicking out the Tories.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Which speaks to a growing idea. That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world. They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday . Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Remarkably the hottest temperature on record in Macon is 39.8C, in (when else) August 2003. That will be broken this year.
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
You make wine, don't you?
Do you think Bordeaux can adapt? I'm not sure how they can. Southwest France is slated to get some of the highest temps soonest, and they are completely dependant on tradition for their prestige - so they can't suddenly grow Spanish or Greek grape varietals to adapt. In my amateur opinion
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
And will continue to do so for some time. All the expertise from management and scientists, right down to the super high end cleaners are there. You can't just magic up the staff, let alone the infrastructure overnight.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
America is throwing $50 billion at chip-makers as part of its $280 billion Chips & Science Act. China and South Korea are also throwing tens if not hundreds of billions at their own semiconductor sectors. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/us_chips_act_vs_world/
Interesting.
"The eagerly anticipated spending bill paves the way for $280 billion in funding [...], roughly $52 billion of which is earmarked for boosting US semiconductor production."
"China is said to have already invested $80 billion of a planned $150 billion in government subsidies in its bid to become the global leader in all segments of the semiconductor industry by 2030."
One small point - the American money is a carrot, with massive investments from the companies themselves. One estimate is that if all of it goes ahead, they will be putting in about double that themselves.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Wow - I hadn't realised she was so stupid. If she goes on like this, she could still lose.
She could easily have said "Not in a repeat of the circumstances of 2020-21, no, but in circumstances that were even graver then yes I could imagine considering authorising one."
First Poll with fieldwork entirely after Picket Gate
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton · 4h Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
Nobody in the real world gives a fuck about “picket gate”.
People care if Lab is on the side of workers or not
How would you know about the real world?
Most people don't think union people are workers. Because so few people are in unions. That's a bad thing btw.
Real people can empathize with workers taking a stand and not being prepared to take massive real term pay cuts in a COL crisis and can see SKS is not on their side.
Ben Pointer apparently agrees real people dont give a fuck I am surprised at Ben not so much at CHB
...about "Picket Gate!
No one gives a shit about the Labour internal squabble.
As it happens, I think Starmer has got this one wrong but the vast majority of voters won't notice. The only people getting worked up about it are those on the left who see Starmer's Labour as the real enemy, when they should of course be focused on kicking out the Tories.
Labour MP stands on Picket Line in support of the workers asking for a fair deal and is sacked by SKS.
Starmer not being on their side is big news in the real world IMO
You are entitled to your view but if the next few Polls with fieldwork after this show the same as RW you need to find what the fuck voters do care about that is causing the reduced lead.
If its Lab squabbling that is entirely SKS's own goal nobody elses
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Clunky answer to the issue of age related material available on the internet.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Lilico is a great contra-indicator. Whatever opinion he has on whatever topic, you can be sure that the exact opposite view is the correct one. He is the Delingpole de nous jours.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Clunky answer to the issue of age related material available on the internet.
No it wasn't clunky, it was her making up something on the spot. Not the first time she's done that
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
What a load of tosh. Truss is another from the Bozo camp who has zero principles and who had a sudden conversion to leave after she realized it would help her career .
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Clunky answer to the issue of age related material available on the internet.
If clunky means insane and unworkable. Teenagers already have their own version of the Internet anyway. It's called TikTok.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Which speaks to a growing idea. That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world. They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
You what? A particular age group, as a whole, is cleverer than anyone in a very, very highly selected for group in half a dozen age groups above it?
I will very seriously try to imagine what it is like to be stupid enough to believe that.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
Thanks. I think we'll go for the Gotthard route too - pass or tunnel will depend on the weather (no point in driving over if it's cloudy).
I will bear Cluny in future for next time. We are settled on Beaune this time - we have never been to the Hospices de Beaune and want to see it.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Clunky answer to the issue of age related material available on the internet.
No it wasn't clunky, it was her making up something on the spot. Not the first time she's done that
It's this knee jerk assumption the modern world is "wrong".
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
'Every child should go to a good school.'
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
What a load of tosh. Truss is another from the Bozo camp who has zero principles and who had a sudden conversion to leave after she realized it would help her career .
I’m sorry, since when did conservatives have principles?
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Which speaks to a growing idea. That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world. They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
You what? A particular age group, as a whole, is cleverer than anyone in a very, very highly selected for group in half a dozen age groups above it?
I will very seriously try to imagine what it is like to be stupid enough to believe that.
Are you stupid enough to conclude that's what I said from reading what I actually said? Or are you merely being obtuse and argumentative?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
'Every child should go to a good school.'
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
And you think that once you have taken out all the smart kids and the kids with rich parents, that the schools that the remaining kids go to will be excellent schools, which the government will fund generously?
And @HYUFD, for all his quirks (Grammar schools, say, or rather for pity's sake, don't say), actually gets that the point of the Conservative party is to win and retain power. And if that means bending to gather sufficient votes, so be it. Similarly, try for enough boring competence that the lower orders don't revolt.
What a lot of those scrabbling onto the Truss Express haven't noticed is that she is very good at telling them what they want to hear, however contradictory or mad that is. Having just had their fingers burnt by someone else with the same MO, you would have thought that they would have been more careful about that, but hey ho.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Wow - I hadn't realised she was so stupid. If she goes on like this, she could still lose.
She could easily have said "Not in a repeat of the circumstances of 2020-21, no, but in circumstances that were even graver then yes I could imagine considering authorising one."
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
'Every child should go to a good school.'
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
And you think that once you have taken out all the smart kids and the kids with rich parents, that the schools that the remaining kids go to will be excellent schools, which the government will fund generously?
They will still be funded by taxpayers yes, indeed those sending their kids to private schools will be paying twice for school fees and for state education via tax.
For non private schools and non grammars as I said have as many academies and free schools as possible
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Which speaks to a growing idea. That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world. They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
You what? A particular age group, as a whole, is cleverer than anyone in a very, very highly selected for group in half a dozen age groups above it?
I will very seriously try to imagine what it is like to be stupid enough to believe that.
Are you stupid enough to conclude that's what I said from reading what I actually said? Or are you merely being obtuse and argumentative?
Fail. You started this with the utterly ludicrous "teenagers are morons" claim.
Best you delete your account and reappear as as an artisan cupcake baker or something.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
He doesn't want to succumb to Woke.
It's only Association Football. And women! I suspect that Johnson's sporting interests don't extend beyond rugger, cricket, the wall game and the boat race.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered so went at 11 while I stayed at my prep school as I wanted to go to Tonbridge ultimately and did common entrance at 13. We were both given the choice
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday . Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Remarkably the hottest temperature on record in Macon is 39.8C, in (when else) August 2003. That will be broken this year.
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
You make wine, don't you?
Do you think Bordeaux can adapt? I'm not sure how they can. Southwest France is slated to get some of the highest temps soonest, and they are completely dependant on tradition for their prestige - so they can't suddenly grow Spanish or Greek grape varietals to adapt. In my amateur opinion
Bordeaux had recently added a few Iberian varieties to its approved list for the AOC: Touriga Nacional, Alvarinho and a couple of others. Bordeaux is such a huge appellation they can do this but of course it won’t find its way to top chateaux any time soon. Trouble is few high end buyers will want to drink these because they are dead set on Cabernet and Merlot (and Sémillon / Sauvignon for white).
I think Bordeaux will survive though. The same grapes are grown in the much hotter Napa and various other new world locations, and wine tastes adapt. The most under threat I think are Champagne - it relies on crap summers, and summers there are no longer crap; and Nebbiolo / Sangiovese growers in N Italy who are going to end up with syrupy med reds with no refinement.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered
If grammar schools are so good why didn't you want to go to one?
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Interesting to read Peter Zeihan (referred to in an earlier post on this site, about the Ukraine war) on this very topic; he thinks that this fear relating to advanced chips is overblown, as Japan and, particularly, the USA have the capabilities and technology for high-end chip fabrication, he says.
Zeihan further suggests that (presumably short of an actual nuclear confrontation, which shafts everybody), a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could theoretically be cut off not even requiring the USA but by an alliance of local states that are not keen on the idea - the Japanese navy alone, he asserts, is a more capable force than the Chinese one. The Japanese and/or Indians could likewise cut off China's access to the Indian Ocean, which is the route most of its fuel imports. An international boycott, on the scale of the one currently in place for Russia, would cripple China far more than it has Russia due to the structure of the Chinese economy.
This is not to say that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is impossible, just that it would be so self-destructive on the part of the Chinese government as to be suicidal.
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
I see this as an important part of education. Obviously academic stuff matters, but all good schools know that the best examples they produce are much more than that. Winchester College's motto is "manners maketh man", and the kids I meet from the very posh nearby Uppingham School are a lovely bunch of well rounded individuals.
Going to a Comprehensive school meant that I had friends from all classes and walks of life. It taught me the difference between intelligence and education, it taught me how to navigate a world where values and culture were very different to my own family. It taught me how to deal with bullies amongst both peers and teachers, and how to stick up for what is right.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Okay she also said there should be two internets.
Which speaks to a growing idea. That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world. They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
You what? A particular age group, as a whole, is cleverer than anyone in a very, very highly selected for group in half a dozen age groups above it?
I will very seriously try to imagine what it is like to be stupid enough to believe that.
Are you stupid enough to conclude that's what I said from reading what I actually said? Or are you merely being obtuse and argumentative?
Fail. You started this with the utterly ludicrous "teenagers are morons" claim.
Best you delete your account and reappear as as an artisan cupcake baker or something.
Sorry. That makes no sense whatsoever. Probably 'cos I'm not blessed with your uniquely profound insight or summat.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
'Every child should go to a good school.'
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
And you think that once you have taken out all the smart kids and the kids with rich parents, that the schools that the remaining kids go to will be excellent schools, which the government will fund generously?
They will still be funded by taxpayers yes, indeed those sending their kids to private schools will be paying twice for school fees and for state education via tax.
For non private schools and non grammars as I said have as many academies and free schools as possible
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
Thanks. I think we'll go for the Gotthard route too - pass or tunnel will depend on the weather (no point in driving over if it's cloudy).
I will bear Cluny in future for next time. We are settled on Beaune this time - we have never been to the Hospices de Beaune and want to see it.
Use Google Maps to keep an eye on the queues for the Gottard tunnel - as essentially the only free main road crossing of the Alps into Italy, in summer wait times for the tunnel can sometimes be hours. In May it was bad enough.
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
Talk about an own goal . Utterly disrespectful and a gift to the SNP . I despair sometimes .
For all the Truss should not be underestimated stuff we’ve had recently, her comments on Sturgeon this evening show that she’s not the brightest button. What a gift to the SNP. They’ll absolutely love it.
The Tory embrace of English nationalism that began with Cameron almost immediately after the 2014 referendum is pretty much complete now.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Lilico is a great contra-indicator. Whatever opinion he has on whatever topic, you can be sure that the exact opposite view is the correct one. He is the Delingpole de nous jours.
Indeed Lilico talking up Truss is a reassuring development. It suggests she’ll have zero appeal to the normal voting public.
I have this fear that with tabloid support she’ll somehow manage to convince everyone she’s some brand new political superstar ready to take Britain to back to its glory days when 2 and sixpence bought you a cinema ticket, bag of chips and the bus fare home and there were great British standpipes in the streets measuring out proper non-snowflake heatwave doses of water in pints and quarts.
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
It’s not about legality it’s about how you preserve and make a case for the continuing union.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered
If grammar schools are so good why didn't you want to go to one?
Academically there was little difference between the local boys grammar and the public school I attended but the latter had more facilities and going to public school still has a bit extra social cachet like it or not.
My sister however preferred the atmosphere at her grammar and did very well regardless anyway. My cousins on my mother's side went to comprehensives but they were in Wiltshire where there was no grammar option and their parents could not afford to go private
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
If there are grammar schools in your area then the other schools are in reality secondary moderns, whatever they are called, and it is very understandable why people would want to avoid them. My criticism of private education is always about the system, not individual choices, where everyone has to do what they see as best for their own children.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
Yep. V important point. And why "lefties" who oppose private schools yet use them are NOT by dint of that automatically hypocrites.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Lilico is a great contra-indicator. Whatever opinion he has on whatever topic, you can be sure that the exact opposite view is the correct one. He is the Delingpole de nous jours.
Indeed Lilico talking up Truss is a reassuring development. It suggests she’ll have zero appeal to the normal voting public.
I have this fear that with tabloid support she’ll somehow manage to convince everyone she’s some brand new political superstar ready to take Britain to back to its glory days when 2 and sixpence bought you a cinema ticket, bag of chips and the bus fare home and there were great British standpipes in the streets measuring out proper non-snowflake heatwave doses of water in pints and quarts.
You should be fearful. She could do it, against Starmer
He is bereft of ideas and charm, she has ideas and a soupcon of charm. It might be enough
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
Talk about an own goal . Utterly disrespectful and a gift to the SNP . I despair sometimes .
I think this is the results of Tory wipe out in Scotland. It feels like a different country to Torys now.
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
It’s not about legality it’s about how you preserve and make a case for the continuing union.
No it isn't, legally and constituonally all a Tory government has to do is say 'NO' to Sturgeon, forever if needed if re elected.
If Labour grants indyref2 it would be their problem to win it
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Lilico is a great contra-indicator. Whatever opinion he has on whatever topic, you can be sure that the exact opposite view is the correct one. He is the Delingpole de nous jours.
Indeed Lilico talking up Truss is a reassuring development. It suggests she’ll have zero appeal to the normal voting public.
I have this fear that with tabloid support she’ll somehow manage to convince everyone she’s some brand new political superstar ready to take Britain to back to its glory days when 2 and sixpence bought you a cinema ticket, bag of chips and the bus fare home and there were great British standpipes in the streets measuring out proper non-snowflake heatwave doses of water in pints and quarts.
There will be a bit of that to be sure. Selling the latest Tory product to the masses is the tabloids' function and they are well versed in it, and there are plenty of people happy to lap it up. The Tories will get a bounce and I would expect them to have some decent poll leads soon.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered so went at 11 while I stayed at my prep school as I wanted to go to Tonbridge ultimately and did common entrance at 13. We were both given the choice
And a child with poor parents who fails the 11 plus gets no choice and is dumped at 11
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
It’s not about legality it’s about how you preserve and make a case for the continuing union.
No it isn't, legally and constituonally all a Tory government has to do is say 'NO' to Sturgeon, forever if needed if re elected.
If Labour grants indyref2 it would be their problem to win it
If only we had just said no to all those empire holdings in the 20th century, we’d still rule a quarter of the globe... I think you are wrong if you think a U.K. government can in reality keep saying no.
The conservatives can ignore Sturgeon as much as they like. The consequence of doing so is probably to increase support for independence, but
i) The SNP will need Westminster's permission for a referendum that will enable them to parlay onto EU membership without being bedblocked by Madrid. ii) Losing Scotland is a net positive for the Tories in terms of pure UK electoral calculus.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered so went at 11 while I stayed at my prep school as I wanted to go to Tonbridge ultimately and did common entrance at 13. We were both given the choice
And a child with poor parents who fails the 11 plus gets no choice and is dumped at 11
Which is still better than a bright child from a poor area being denied the chance of a top quality state school ie a grammar
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
The grammar school I went to carried the very likely risk of being smacked in the face (well, arse) for any perceived transgression. But that was 50 years ago.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 55m Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Lilico is a great contra-indicator. Whatever opinion he has on whatever topic, you can be sure that the exact opposite view is the correct one. He is the Delingpole de nous jours.
Indeed Lilico talking up Truss is a reassuring development. It suggests she’ll have zero appeal to the normal voting public.
I have this fear that with tabloid support she’ll somehow manage to convince everyone she’s some brand new political superstar ready to take Britain to back to its glory days when 2 and sixpence bought you a cinema ticket, bag of chips and the bus fare home and there were great British standpipes in the streets measuring out proper non-snowflake heatwave doses of water in pints and quarts.
You should be fearful. She could do it, against Starmer
He is bereft of ideas and charm, she has ideas and a soupcon of charm. It might be enough
She does have a soupçon. But Boris had whole soup bowls of the stuff and blew it. That’s the hope.
As others have suggested I think Rishi has a higher floor but lower ceiling. Truss is more dangerous to Labour. But perhaps less so to the Lib Dems in the Home Counties. Mordaunt or Tugendhat were more of a concern there.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered so went at 11 while I stayed at my prep school as I wanted to go to Tonbridge ultimately and did common entrance at 13. We were both given the choice
And a child with poor parents who fails the 11 plus gets no choice and is dumped at 11
And is much more likely to fail the 11 plus than a kid who is sent to prep school, which focuses on getting kids into selective schools.
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
It’s not about legality it’s about how you preserve and make a case for the continuing union.
No it isn't, legally and constituonally all a Tory government has to do is say 'NO' to Sturgeon, forever if needed if re elected.
If Labour grants indyref2 it would be their problem to win it
If only we had just said no to all those empire holdings in the 20th century, we’d still rule a quarter of the globe... I think you are wrong if you think a U.K. government can in reality keep saying no.
Well it wasn't the Tories who gave up India, it was Labour and that was the key moment which began the end of Empire, Churchill wanted to keep India. (Though of course Scotland has MPs and Holyrood so is not a colony).
Spain has successfully said no to Catalan nationalists for years without even 1 independence vote.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday . Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Remarkably the hottest temperature on record in Macon is 39.8C, in (when else) August 2003. That will be broken this year.
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
You make wine, don't you?
Do you think Bordeaux can adapt? I'm not sure how they can. Southwest France is slated to get some of the highest temps soonest, and they are completely dependant on tradition for their prestige - so they can't suddenly grow Spanish or Greek grape varietals to adapt. In my amateur opinion
California has adapted: they grow Merlot and Cabernet at much higher temperatures than Bordeaux, because they are massive users of technology. If you go to Robert Mondavi, each individual vine has a drip feed and a moisture sensor
It means quite homogeneous wines, because rainfall doesn't matter so much anymore, but still some absolutely stunning ones
Utterly pathetic comments from Truss on Sturgeon .
Yes, it’s a poor answer. Nicola Sturgeon presents a difficult challenge for the UK pm, especially a Tory one, as she is intelligent, and tactically astute. She also is adept at blaming the U.K. government for all Scotland’s ills, in a rather similar manner a previous version of the same blame game re the Tories/UKIP and Brexit. But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
She can on the union as it is a reserved matter to the UK government
It’s not about legality it’s about how you preserve and make a case for the continuing union.
No it isn't, legally and constituonally all a Tory government has to do is say 'NO' to Sturgeon, forever if needed if re elected.
If Labour grants indyref2 it would be their problem to win it
If only we had just said no to all those empire holdings in the 20th century, we’d still rule a quarter of the globe... I think you are wrong if you think a U.K. government can in reality keep saying no.
Well it wasn't the Tories who gave up India, it was Labour and that was the key moment which began the end of Empire, Churchill wanted to keep India. (Though of course Scotland has MPs and Holyrood so is not a colony).
Spain has successfully said no to Catalan nationalists for years without even 1 independence vote.
So basically you think we should have tried to keep the empire?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
The article you cite includes a number of criticisms of the methodology of that study. Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents. I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
'Every child should go to a good school.'
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
I thought we'd all (apart from stragglers) signed off on my Optimal Education System from PT.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You have previously posted that you went to school in Kent and you went private and your sister went to the Grammar school. Did you fail the 11 plus (like me) and if so how would you have felt about being dumped in a secondary modern if your parents could not afford a private school.
No I passed the 11 plus, just my sister wanted to go to the grammar school rather than the girls private school she was offered
If grammar schools are so good why didn't you want to go to one?
Academically there was little difference between the local boys grammar and the public school I attended but the latter had more facilities and going to public school still has a bit extra social cachet like it or not.
My sister however preferred the atmosphere at her grammar and did very well regardless anyway. My cousins on my mother's side went to comprehensives but they were in Wiltshire where there was no grammar option and their parents could not afford to go private
I would like to live in a society where "social cachet" ie snobbery is dead, and people are judged on what they say and do not how they talk or who they know.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday . Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Remarkably the hottest temperature on record in Macon is 39.8C, in (when else) August 2003. That will be broken this year.
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
You make wine, don't you?
Do you think Bordeaux can adapt? I'm not sure how they can. Southwest France is slated to get some of the highest temps soonest, and they are completely dependant on tradition for their prestige - so they can't suddenly grow Spanish or Greek grape varietals to adapt. In my amateur opinion
California has adapted: they grow Merlot and Cabernet at much higher temperatures than Bordeaux, because they are massive users of technology. If you go to Robert Mondavi, each individual vine has a drip feed and a moisture sensor
It means quite homogeneous wines, because rainfall doesn't matter so much anymore, but still some absolutely stunning ones
I have never drunk a single Californian wine where I've thought: WOW
I have drunk some nice wines from the USA - from all over. But never anything special
I know I must be missing out but it is peculiar. And I drink and travel a lot
Do they hide them away or something? Are they just so expensive now they sell to Jeff Bezos?
I've had great wines from every continent, bar north America, and Antarctica
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
Taiwan still dominates high end contract chip fabrication
Hello Robert - at the risk of reopening the earlier debate, my responses to your question were basically why I'm entering my kids for grammar school, not should there be grammar schools. Should there be? I can see both sides. But in my authority, there are. And given this it makes sense for me a a parent to try to use them. Because primarily here's an opportunity for my kids to have an education with a very small risk of being smacked in the face for some perceived transgression.
I don't think anyone should be criticized for using the system in place even if you don't approve of it. You do the best for your kids.
Ah yes, the Diane Abbott defence...
What else are you supposed to do?
I think some with very strong views would stick to their principles, but yes I get why people do this. I think though they should be careful with their criticism of wealthy people paying for private education.
BREAKING: Liz Truss says she'll cut £11B from the civil service if elected Prime Minister. She'll cut civil servants' time off from 27 to 25 days, and scrap the role of diversity officers. £8.8B will be saved by cutting the pay of those living outside London and the South East.
Comments
The Maconnais is reasonably well protected from climate change because 1. They grow Chardonnay, in a fuller more new witkd style than further North, 2. They get decent rainfall in May and June even in hot years, 3. There are more inventive winemakers and less bureaucratic bureaucrats (Beaujolais likewise) so we’re starting to see a few plantings of Syrah and Viognier.
Elsewhere, the EU announced the first €11 billion (about $11.2 billion) investment as part of its European Chips Act earlier this year, which is expected to grow to more than €43 billion (about $44 billion) by 2030.
The Telegraph endorses Truss
No one gives a shit about the Labour internal squabble.
As it happens, I think Starmer has got this one wrong but the vast majority of voters won't notice. The only people getting worked up about it are those on the left who see Starmer's Labour as the real enemy, when they should of course be focused on kicking out the Tories.
But the more the world (including its largest electronics exporter China) depends on Taiwan for chips, the less likely China will invade.
Kind of like the German calculation on Russian gas, only they got that wrong because Putin is a psychopath.
That teenagers are morons who need protection from the modern world.
They aren't and they don't. They understand it far better than any politician.
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
55m
Truss is feeling ever more like the real deal. The first actual conservative (with the possible exception of Howard, though he was only a caretaker) the Tories have put in charge for over 30 years. It'll be v interesting to see how that goes in govt. It'll sure shake things up!
Every child should go to a good school. Not just the brightest or best coached for an exam aged 11. And certainly not just those with wealthy parents.
I don't really get why you would think it's OK for most kids to go to bad schools. Well, I do get it, it's because you are an elitist who divides the world into the deserving and the undeserving. I wonder about the values you picked up at your own school - and it makes me more certain that I have done the right thing sending my kids to the local school where they mix with everyone just like I did and won't view society as divided into them and us. I really don't think your divisive mindset is a healthy way of looking at the world.
Do you think Bordeaux can adapt? I'm not sure how they can. Southwest France is slated to get some of the highest temps soonest, and they are completely dependant on tradition for their prestige - so they can't suddenly grow Spanish or Greek grape varietals to adapt. In my amateur opinion
All the expertise from management and scientists, right down to the super high end cleaners are there.
You can't just magic up the staff, let alone the infrastructure overnight.
In short: wow, we've got a fight on our hands
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-war-economy-sizing-up-the-new
She could easily have said "Not in a repeat of the circumstances of 2020-21, no, but in circumstances that were even graver then yes I could imagine considering authorising one."
Starmer not being on their side is big news in the real world IMO
You are entitled to your view but if the next few Polls with fieldwork after this show the same as RW you need to find what the fuck voters do care about that is causing the reduced lead.
If its Lab squabbling that is entirely SKS's own goal nobody elses
And all the sensible ones Rish! ?
Any counter examples to either?
Teenagers already have their own version of the Internet anyway. It's called TikTok.
I will very seriously try to imagine what it is like to be stupid enough to believe that.
I will bear Cluny in future for next time. We are settled on Beaune this time - we have never been to the Hospices de Beaune and want to see it.
Well everybody agrees with that. Just you as an ideological leftwinger believe that is achieved by universal comprehensive education, while I as an ideological rightwinger believe that is achieved by maximum choice and as many private schools, free schools, grammar schools and academies as possible
Or are you merely being obtuse and argumentative?
What a lot of those scrabbling onto the Truss Express haven't noticed is that she is very good at telling them what they want to hear, however contradictory or mad that is. Having just had their fingers burnt by someone else with the same MO, you would have thought that they would have been more careful about that, but hey ho.
For non private schools and non grammars as I said have as many academies and free schools as possible
Best you delete your account and reappear as as an artisan cupcake baker or something.
I think Bordeaux will survive though. The same grapes are grown in the much hotter Napa and various other new world locations, and wine tastes adapt. The most under threat I think are Champagne - it relies on crap summers, and summers there are no longer crap; and Nebbiolo / Sangiovese growers in N Italy who are going to end up with syrupy med reds with no refinement.
Zeihan further suggests that (presumably short of an actual nuclear confrontation, which shafts everybody), a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could theoretically be cut off not even requiring the USA but by an alliance of local states that are not keen on the idea - the Japanese navy alone, he asserts, is a more capable force than the Chinese one. The Japanese and/or Indians could likewise cut off China's access to the Indian Ocean, which is the route most of its fuel imports. An international boycott, on the scale of the one currently in place for Russia, would cripple China far more than it has Russia due to the structure of the Chinese economy.
This is not to say that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is impossible, just that it would be so self-destructive on the part of the Chinese government as to be suicidal.
But she cannot be ignored, any more than the significant number of Scots who currently believe their country should govern itself.
Going to a Comprehensive school meant that I had friends from all classes and walks of life. It taught me the difference between intelligence and education, it taught me how to navigate a world where values and culture were very different to my own family. It taught me how to deal with bullies amongst both peers and teachers, and how to stick up for what is right.
It was a very good education.
The Tory embrace of English nationalism that began with Cameron almost immediately after the 2014 referendum is pretty much complete now.
I have this fear that with tabloid support she’ll somehow manage to convince everyone she’s some brand new political superstar ready to take Britain to back to its glory days when 2 and sixpence bought you a cinema ticket, bag of chips and the bus fare home and there were great British standpipes in the streets measuring out proper non-snowflake heatwave doses of water in pints and quarts.
My sister however preferred the atmosphere at her grammar and did very well regardless anyway. My cousins on my mother's side went to comprehensives but they were in Wiltshire where there was no grammar option and their parents could not afford to go private
He is bereft of ideas and charm, she has ideas and a soupcon of charm. It might be enough
If Labour grants indyref2 it would be their problem to win it
Maybe his team have all got pissed after the show and thrown money at the problem!
I think you are wrong if you think a U.K. government can in reality keep saying no.
The consequence of doing so is probably to increase support for independence, but
i) The SNP will need Westminster's permission for a referendum that will enable them to parlay onto EU membership without being bedblocked by Madrid.
ii) Losing Scotland is a net positive for the Tories in terms of pure UK electoral calculus.
As others have suggested I think Rishi has a higher floor but lower ceiling. Truss is more dangerous to Labour. But perhaps less so to the Lib Dems in the Home Counties. Mordaunt or Tugendhat were more of a concern there.
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1554212842009726977?s=20&t=ttMtZViD821nHvWbSZ1dLA
Spain has successfully said no to Catalan nationalists for years without even 1 independence vote.
It means quite homogeneous wines, because rainfall doesn't matter so much anymore, but still some absolutely stunning ones
I have drunk some nice wines from the USA - from all over. But never anything special
I know I must be missing out but it is peculiar. And I drink and travel a lot
Do they hide them away or something? Are they just so expensive now they sell to Jeff Bezos?
I've had great wines from every continent, bar north America, and Antarctica
Betfair next prime minister
1.17 Liz Truss 85%
7 Rishi Sunak 14%
Next Conservative leader
1.16 Liz Truss 86%
7 Rishi Sunak 14%
Fantasy economics from Truss!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/01/liz-truss-plan-to-cut-11bn-in-whitehall-waste-ludicrous
That’s going to help with Brexit and CoL. Go Liz!
Betfair next prime minister
1.17 Liz Truss 85%
6.6 Rishi Sunak 15%
Next Conservative leader
1.16 Liz Truss 86%
7 Rishi Sunak 14%