Tuesday, February 22, 2005
In an interview with the Standard, Ms Kelly vowed that the long-awaited Education White Paper will reward high-performing schools and allow more children from poor backgrounds to go to Oxford and Cambridge.
All right-thinking people have long been as one on this: Oxbridge is a throbbing boil on the face of British society, and must be lanced. Its treasures must be plundered and used to fund literacy programmes and childcare. Its land must be seized to make way for Lidls, industrial parks and technical colleges. Its buildings must be appropriated and left standing as a reminder to all of the follies of the past.
Excellence is the goal, not that it occurs in the Thames Valley or the sweaty foot of the Fens. Attracting the brightest, regardless of background, is Oxbridge’s problem, not ours. That the facilities and teaching needed to foster talent exist somewhere should be the national concern. We don’t worry that there are not enough working class children at Eton, we leave that institution to its strange ways. So let Oxford and Cambridge go private and let’s stop shoring up their indefensible position as the Best there was, is and ever will be. Instead of gifting our brightest to these absurd anachronisms, we should ensure that there is excellence elsewhere.
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All right-thinking people have long been as one on this: Oxbridge is a throbbing boil on the face of British society, and must be lanced. Its treasures must be plundered and used to fund literacy programmes and childcare. Its land must be seized to make way for Lidls, industrial parks and technical colleges. Its buildings must be appropriated and left standing as a reminder to all of the follies of the past.
Excellence is the goal, not that it occurs in the Thames Valley or the sweaty foot of the Fens. Attracting the brightest, regardless of background, is Oxbridge’s problem, not ours. That the facilities and teaching needed to foster talent exist somewhere should be the national concern. We don’t worry that there are not enough working class children at Eton, we leave that institution to its strange ways. So let Oxford and Cambridge go private and let’s stop shoring up their indefensible position as the Best there was, is and ever will be. Instead of gifting our brightest to these absurd anachronisms, we should ensure that there is excellence elsewhere.
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