The only thing to be said for Shami Chakrabarti’s stance on selective education – she’s against the reintroduction of grammar schools because it’s tantamount to ‘segregation in schooling’ but her own son is going to Dulwich College – is that she’s not alone. Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, sent two children way outside her constituency to a selective school; Harriet Harman ditto; Diane Abbott’s son went to private school. Yet they’re all against grammars. Frankly it would take less time to point out the Labour bigwig who isn’t hypocritical on this one, viz, Jeremy Corbyn, whose first marriage is said to have foundered, inter alia, on the grammar school question, which makes him seem less, not more, human.
Do I need to point out the double hypocrisy here – not just opting for selection on the basis of academic merit (they don’t take all comers at Dulwich, still less at Eton – Shami shyly refused to say whether it was true her son took the entrance exam) but on the basis of money? £18,000 a year for Dulwich, which pretty well excludes most of us.
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