Grammar schools: Even the BBC is waking up to the painful, divisive reality I Melissa Benn

BBC2’s new series surely puts a further dent in Theresa May’s plans to expand selective education

I suspect I am not the only person who felt beamed into some alien universe watching the first episode of Grammar Schools: Who Will Get In?, BBC2’s mini-series focusing on the transfer to secondary school in the selective borough of Bexley.

Are there really parts of diverse, metropolitan London in 2018 in which primary-age children are put through the 11-plus test? Who could not be haunted by the silent tears of Jaenita’s mother, who works at Poundland and has spent hundreds of pounds a month for years on test tuition, only to see her plucky, articulate daughter fear herself “a failure in life”?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Ji2fKD