Michael Rosen

People sometimes say that they were working class and it was the grammar school that saved them. This claim rests on the assumption that if they hadn’t gone to grammar school, they would have failed. No statistic I’ve seen would back that claim… The claim ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of working-class children have succeeded at comprehensive schools. The past 30 years have seen, for example, a whole new generation of people who are the first in their family to gain qualifications, to go into the sixth form or to go to university – thanks to comprehensive schools.