Letters to the Editor | 10 June 2006

Schools for success

From Barnaby Lenon

Sir: Robert Yates rightly explains that grammar schools were the path to academic success and a good job for clever working-class children in the period 1935 to 1975 (‘Grammar schools are liberal, Mr Cameron’, 3 June). To these should be added the many direct-grant schools, independent schools that charged fees but took clever children from low-income homes on local authority grants. They were the most successful schools in Britain academically and of course had children from a wide range of social backgrounds. For example, in south London, a relatively low-income area, these included such schools as Dulwich College, Eltham College and the Whitgift Foundation schools.

Following the decision to move to comprehensive schools in the 1970s, most of the grammar schools were destroyed. The direct-grant schools lost the local authority grant and could take only fee-payers but, unlike the grammar schools, these schools still exist, and they are still among our most successful schools.