Managing failure in the classroom - the ghost of the 50s and 60 returns...

Michael Rosen's open letter to Nicky Morgan about the dangers of the return of creeping selection are a timely reminder of the waste engendered by the grammar school system. Talk about helping the brightest tends to be a diversionary tactic. Selection now, with its emphasis on critical reasoning test results, means that children from poorer backgrounds won't even get to sit the 11-plus in the first place because parents can't afford the tutoring fees. I live in an area with two selected grammars - and a well established system of private tutoring that takes kids as young as 7! I also grew up in Leeds as the 11-plus was ending. Mine was the first year that didn't have so to sit the exam, so my parents never got to find out if - in the not-so-infallible view of my primary school teachers, I was/wasn't 'university material', aged only 11. Primary teaching in those days - as Rosen so well illustrates - was about managing failure for around two thirds of pupils. Now, in selective grammar areas, its about letting parents battle it out to get their children the supposedly best tutors so they can pass the 11-plus. A grammar school place has little to do with helping the clever working class, more ensuring the sharp elbows of the middle class get what many of them view as their just reward.