The final solution
Sir: My own prediction is longer term than Paul Griffin's (September 13).
In about twenty years, the middle class will have taken full advantage of the national comprehensive system. It will have either gone to the private sector to which many of the best teachers will continue to go or, by moving into areas where there are 'good' schools, it will create a de facto segregation within the system, based on the ability of parents to buy themselves into the catchment areas served by
good schools. • At this point socialist thinkers will produce a new radical solution to solve the class divisions created and sustained by the comprehensive system. A system of selection will be proposed allowing able children from all social sections of society to go to special schools designed to stretch the academically-minded. What these schools might be called I wouldn't know.
However, the middle class, well satisfied with its good area comprehensives, will oppose this radical socialist nonsense on the grounds that good schools must not be diluted by undesirable elements. .
G. B. B. Richey Briar Cottage, Winterbourne Dauntsey, Salisbury, Wiltshire
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