Mais educação em Inglaterra

Robert Yale, na Spectator

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"The reality, in fact, is that schooling is now more divided than ever — not only in terms of the state/private split but within the comprehensive system. Attend a comprehensive in a leafy suburb, and the chances are you’ll benefit from a de facto grammar; attend one in an inner city, and think de facto secondary modern. (There are good inner-city comprehensives, but the pattern is clear — check out the league tables and the addresses of the leading schools.) In 2006 the division is determined by social background, not by academic ability. Which is preferable?
The truth is that the comprehensive system never really took account of how Britons live. If social inclusion was one aim — bringing together, in a classroom, children of very different backgrounds — it was destined to fail. People of similar economic clout tend to live together — postcodes reveal plenty about income and profession, certainly outside London."

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"Sociologists tend to agree that, in terms of aspiration, familiarity breeds ambition. So if your friends’ parents, or indeed your parents’ friends, are doctors, lawyers, bankers or (heaven forbid) journalists they, and by extension their jobs, will hardly seem out of reach."

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"But common sense long lost out to rhetoric in chatter about education. Now our leading political parties appear to agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with telling a bunch of ten-year-olds that some are more academically able than others at the moment. Elsewhere, selection on ability seems simply logical; whether you’re learning to ski or taking classes in bricklaying, you find your level. But schooling, it seems, has a logic all of its own..."