The UK Conservative Party has “made Britain great again” by restoring systems that use tax money to subsidise the wealthy; for example, they have revived the “grammar school” system of publicly funded schools that get to turn away students based on their test scores. Since you can improve your test scores by paying expensive tutors, grammar schools are primarily a way of letting wealthy people enjoy a parallel, publicly funded educational system.
Like the academy schools (another Conservative darling, similar to US charter schools), grammar schools turn your local, publicly funded schools into dumping grounds for kids with special needs, kids from poor backgrounds, and kids who do not perform well on tests — and so anyone whose kid is entering the school system has to choose whether to send their kids to one of these chaotic, underfunded, schools where they will be the only kid who isn’t in crisis and hope that the teachers pay some attention to them anyway, or whether to pay for expensive tutors to pave the way into a selective school.
Just to sweeten that proposition, Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged a £50 million tax-funded subsidy to grammar schools — and 72% of that money is going to Tory-held electoral districts, where the overwhelming majority of these elitist institutions have opened.
Theresa May’s £50million fund for grammar schools has been branded a “shameless bribe” – as nearly three-quarters of them are in Tory seats.Mirror analysis shows 117 of the 163 selective schools in England (72%) are in Conservative-held constituencies.
Almost half, 77, are in safe Tory seats with a majority of more than 10,000.
Of the others, 41 are in Labour seats, four in Lib Dem seats and one in the seat of Speaker John Bercow.
‘It looks like a shameless bribe’: Almost three-quarters of grammar schools to benefit from Theresa May’s £50million handout are in Tory seats [Dan Bloom/The Mirror]
(via Naked Capitalism)