Grammar Schools
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It has been reported that Prime Minister Theresa May is planning on lifting the ban on creating new grammar schools. Chris Cook, Policy Editor for Newsnight, has been looking at the evidence for whether these selective schools improve exam performance or social mobility.
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Teenage girls aren’t so bad after all This week’s Desk of Good News challenges the concept that teenage girls and young women are badly behaved. It features statistics on falling teenage pregnancy rates, drinking figures and improving educational success.
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Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, Tim Harford here. This is the longer Radio 4 edition of More or Less. |
| 0:05.1 | First broadcast on Friday the 12th of August. |
| 0:09.5 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life. |
| 0:16.0 | This week, why do Olympic swimmers break records more often than Olympic track and field athletes? |
| 0:22.0 | We'll continue our quest for better living through numbers. the Olympic, track and field athletes. |
| 0:22.7 | We'll continue our quest for better living through numbers |
| 0:25.4 | as we explore whether mathematics can help you win the lottery. |
| 0:29.5 | And more good news from the more or less desk of good news. This week it's all about girls |
| 0:34.2 | behaving badly. But first it was reported this week that new Prime Minister |
| 0:40.0 | Theresa May is considering lifting the ban on building new grammar schools. These selective |
| 0:45.7 | schools where children sit an exam at 10 or 11 were popular after the Second World War |
| 0:50.7 | as a way to select the brightest for a solid academic state education. |
| 0:55.5 | They still exist in some parts of the country, but they're controversial. |
| 0:59.0 | Some love the system, some hate it, and in 1998 Tony Blair placed a ban on building any new grammar schools. |
| 1:07.0 | Newsnight's policy editor Chris Cook has been studying the use of grammar schools for many years, |
| 1:12.0 | so we waited until he sauntered, passed, all doled up for the |
| 1:15.2 | telly, then we kidnapped him, dragged him into the more or less radio dungeon and forced him to tell us |
| 1:20.5 | everything he knew, starting with the arguments for and against grammar schools. |
| 1:25.7 | The big arguments on grammar schools are on one side that people feel that they improve the overall |
| 1:31.9 | performance of the school system because bright kids are given an |
| 1:35.2 | education that's fitted to them and the rest of the kids get an education that works for them. |
| 1:40.4 | People move at their own pace. It's like the arguments for setting and streaming. They also argue that it improves social mobility. So a poor child has a |
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