Hence the statistic that more than half of Oxbridge places go to the schools that educate only 7 per cent of the school population.The Government has shamefully given credibility to this handicap race by its support for the Assisted Places Scheme. By creaming off the most able students from the state sector, it is publicising the fact that it has no intention of seriously trying to raise standards in state schools. This action diverts public money to private schools and enhances their examination results, while depressing those of schools in the state sector. All of this provides more distorted and spurious figures to promote the cause of the independents.The scheme openly suggests to the public that state schools are, and always will be, second best, and that anyone with any sense will take their children away from them. It is an arrogant thumbing of the nose at those of us who believe that the state education system does work, and can be improved for the good of all.Tony Blair is right to sound the death knell of the scheme, should he come to power. He does not need to justify how the money saved will be spent elsewhere in the system. The move will be a much-needed boost in the fight for educational equality in BritainnTony Mooney is headteacher of a comprehensive school in south London.Drop the dead dogmaAs the general election approaches, both major political parties have gone to war, and it is a commonplace that the first casualty of war is truth.The debate over the assisted places scheme is a case in point.

New Labour would have us believe that the abolition of the scheme would rid the system of a corrupt practice exploited by the middle classes and that the money saved would reduce class sizes in maintained primary schools at a stroke. A close analysis of the facts reveals a different picture:42 per cent of places awarded are free, because recipients’ families have incomes below pounds 9,800;in 1996/7 more than 37,000 children from low-income families benefited from the scheme;in some parts of the country, the cost of assisted places is less than the cost of a maintained school place;savings generated by abolishing the scheme would produce one extra teacher for every 2,200 children in the five-to-seven age range.Moreover, a MORI poll in 1996 revealed that 63 per cent of those questioned supported the scheme and, more significantly, 55 per cent of Labour voters were in favour of assisted places.So much for the national picture. But how does this work at local or individual level?This month, at Clifton, we held our annual assisted places examination which produced six children competing for each individual place we have to offer. The average income of those families who have been offered places at Clifton as a result of the examination was pounds 9,239.66. Four of the families concerned are on income support; eight of the children offered places come from single-parent families. There is not the slightest hint that these awards have been given to supplement the fee-paying capability of a so-called grasping middle class in Bristol. The awards have gone to children with real potential who, without this assistance, would run the risk of not having that potential realised.

I am sure that Clifton is not alone in the thoroughly proper and honest way in which it has administered the scheme.The message from this headmaster to both New Labour and those who decry this initiative is clear – drop the dead dogma and credit the electorate with the intelligence to deserve the truth Dr Bob Acheson is headmaster of Clifton College Preparatory School and chairman elect of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.. Peter is 11, in his first year at secondary school. He is sitting on the edge of his chair, eyes darting around the room, fidgeting, tie cut in half and askew, laces undone, giving the clear impression of a defiant boy who would rather be outside playing football. Brash and loud, he doesn’t seem to lack confidence: Peter is able to bring a lesson to a halt with his antics. But look closer and you see a vulnerable child, rather lost, who is struggling. Peter is the type of boy that education experts are desperately, albeit belatedly, trying to understand: the under-achiever, the type whose poor performance is so widespread that girls outdo boys in every GCSE subject except physics. Boys pull their socks up at A- and degree-level, although more girls than boys manage two or more A-levels and more women than men achieve a First degree.
Jim Graham, an avuncular retired headteacher and associate fellow at Keele University, is completing a six-weekly questionnaire with Peter at Priestlands school in Lymington, Hampshire, to find out what is bothering him It is a familiar story.

Lesson after lesson is described as boring – “The teacher talks too much, sometimes for the whole lesson.” A picture of long-running confrontation emerges – “The teacher doesn’t like me because she keeps blaming things on me.” He feels that there is insufficient support to prevent bullying – “He pushed me in the face and the school didn’t do nothing about it Just suspended him off lessons. They should have suspended him off school, because he keeps coming up to me.”In short, Paul is one of the “disappointed”, a group that comprises 25 per cent of the secondary school population, according to Michael Barber, professor of education at London’s Institute of Education. If nothing is done, Peter could become one of the additional 10 per cent who are “disaffected” – so fed up that they play truant and continually disrupt lessons. Or he could turn into one of the 5 per cent who make up the “disappeared”, those who simply drop out or are thrown out of the system, never or rarely to be seen again.