Comment by physicsguy

Comment by physicsguy 4 days ago

2 replies

> In later years, getting out of school tuition was the main way to prep for the 11+, which put grammar schools financially out of reach for a lot of working class families. It had basically become a parallel state funded education system for the middle class.

But given most schools now in the country (given only a small subset still have grammar schools) are done by catchment area, much of this still exists in comprehensive education too. Now, if you're well off you just buy a house in the right area so your kids get in to the good school.

rgblambda 4 days ago

Yeah, that's the new problem.

I suspect in the past, people were less mobile, there wasn't the same disparity in wealth between different localities in the same general area, and school league tables weren't published. So the idea of moving to an area for (among other things) better education for their children wasn't something that was done.

  • physicsguy 3 days ago

    I'm not really sure that's true. One of the things about grammar schools was that they covered quite wide areas since they were the top 25% scorers of exams. So think three ordinary sized secondary schools to a single grammar (which were usually single sex as well in those days).