Letter: Schools for the rich

Sir: Does Verity Horne ("The right school can save your life", 26 August) really think that only grammar school pupils care about their futures? Does she really think that only grammar school teachers care about their pupils? If she does, then insulating her in the ivory tower of a grammar school has served her very badly.

She goes badly wrong in thinking that the available alternative to her Kent grammar school is a comprehensive. In areas like Kent the existence of the grammar schools means that the alternatives will not be comprehensive but secondary moderns with all the attendant problems of low morale, low expectation and low achievement that have beset selection for more than 50 years.

Kent, with more than its share of leafy suburbs, manages to have more than 10 per cent of its schools performing worse than the lowest achieving schools in Hackney. This is a desperately high price, paid by a majority of Kent's children, for ever-decreasing benefit.

MARTIN FREY

Appledore, Kent