Dear Damian Hinds, here’s what your schools minister can learn from Eton | Michael Rosen

Nick Gibb thinks the ‘core purpose’ of school is to prepare pupils to compete for jobs. Eton college disagrees

I see your hands have been full with inventing a way to price up university courses based in part on how much “value” they give “to our economy”. (Clearly not medicine, say: doctors are too busy keeping unproductive people alive.)

When it comes to religion, though, value to the economy doesn’t come into it: you’re going to allow new faith schools to take in more than 50% of pupils on the basis of their religion: more state subsidised segregation, then. Again, while Theresa May revealed that we don’t have an education system that “serves the needs of every child” (we never knew!), you told Andrew Marr on the BBC that you are enthusiastic about wanting to expand existing grammar schools. You didn’t say this means in effect that you want to expand non-grammar schools. I look forward to you explaining how increasing the number of 11-year-olds labelled as not good enough to go to grammar school will “serve the needs of every child”.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2F5Rqwb

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