Michael Gove is giving a speech tonight reaffirming the Tory plans for radical education reform. In it Gove deploys a battery of statistics to show just how comprehensively the current system has failed. The one that stood out most dramatically to me was this one:
“Out of 75,000 children eligible for free school meals only 5,000 were even entered for A level. Of that 189, only 75 were boys. Yet in the same year Eton had 175 boys who got 3As at A level. One school with almost two and a half times as many boys getting 3As as the entire population of our poorest boys on benefit.”
If this doesn’t persuade you of the urgent need for education reform, then I don’t know what will.
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