My issue with Grammar schools comes from my own experience. Aged 10, I was exceptionally good at English and exceptionally poor at Maths. I failed the then-11 plus because my numbers/logic answers pulled down my score. I didn’t go to a local secondary modern school because I was able to go to boarding school. The school had a test to decide which stream you went into. Again, my ‘maths’ meant I didn’t make it into the top two streams – effectively the Grammar school steams. I remember my English master (we started off unstreamed, then took the test) saying he was sorry I was going to a CSE stream. He gave me a B+ for my term report. I was writing poetry in the vein of James Joyce, having never seen his work or anything similar.

Result: me bored and unmotivated in English class. Mocking the easy (for me) work we were given to do. Getting top marks again and again, and 1st in English for six terms in a row.

You might think, what’s my problem. I now earn my living from writing. I have a Masters-level qualification in public relations. It all came good, so ultimately the system worked.

No.

What I really needed from my secondary education was to be pushed and challenged. … and to fail at English sometimes, so that I tried harder to be the best. I would have been even better at English and would have reached my full potential.

Grammar schools, academies, comprehensives, whatever. Please, please, please stream by subject across all those in secondary school, not dividing them based on  assessment at the age of 10 or 11.