Obsession with grammar schools just leaves poor children behind | Letters
I read 'We are in an education arms race' (G2, 5 December) with interest and some dismay. I attended a very good village primary school in Wales immediately after the second world war and, from the beginning, was acutely aware that near the end of my time there I would take an exam, the result of which would decide whether I went to an urban grammar school or a rural secondary school.
The education received in each was wildly different, and when I passed the exam at the second attempt I entered a world of Latin, trigonometry and other studies. These seemed irrelevant to my life as a rabbit and mole-catching youngster living in a village house lit by oil lamps with a weekly tin bath in front of the living-room fire, where my mother seemed to work from the time her eyes opened until she slept. My subsequent career in education led me from an urban secondary modern to a comprehensive, a college of education and a university. I have worked extensively abroad, founded and edited an international research journal and held senior roles in my university. If I had gone to the rural secondary school - the curriculum of which prioritised rural skills including pig-keeping and gardening - I would probably have left at 14 and got a labouring job in my locality.
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