Did you get caned at school for asking questions teacher couldn't answer? Add that to your list of bring-backables.

Compared with what we have now where a country has a political upheaval based on hatred for immigrants doing those jobs, and a classless set of gobshites all loving about with a media studies degree.

Indeed - the BBC reality check website is full of those pesky facts, which we now seem able to ignore and discredit, because we're "sick of experts."

Such as:

"children from prosperous families in Kent (the biggest area for selective schools in England) are more likely to get into grammar schools and also that in selective areas, poorer children overall get relatively worse GCSE results than they do in comprehensive areas."

"Another important piece of research is this work from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which found in 2013 that grammar schools were disproportionately unlikely to admit bright students who were eligible for free school meals or from poorer neighbourhoods and disproportionately likely to admit children from private primary schools."

So - if you're a Tory and you want to perpetuate the status quo of the well off being given a huge leg up in life, it's a good idea; if you have any decency or a sense of social justice, you will see it for what it is - a further attempt to ensure that bothersome working class kids don't get ideas above their station.

So let's analyse one of those pesky "facts". Children from more prosperous families are more likely to get into grammar and poorer children overall get relatively worse GCSE results than in comprehensive areas. That suggests what the US social scientists used to call the "neighbourhood (translated to English!) effect" is at work as one would anticipate. In other words, if there were no grammars the poorer kids would do a bit better because they are mixing with some more highly motivated kids in their comprehensives. What the bias reporting is not saying is how they perform relative to those poorer kids that do get into grammars in those areas that have them. Neither does it say how those more prosperous kids fare in comprehensive's relative to those in grammars. To survive as an independent country in economic terms we need to foster academic excellence for the few in order to drive advances; and good schools for the many. To do otherwise benefits nobody long-term. Grammar schools provide the opportunity for excellence for bright, poorer kids and the fact that more prosperous kids also benefit should not be seen as a reason for not having them. They also help undermine the private sector - where ability to pay is all that counts.

As to the 'IFS' report, it states they have no evidence as to why kids on free school meals with a specified level of attainment are less likely to go to grammars (40% go as against c.66% without free school meals). I would again posit that a / the major part of reason would be the "neighbourhood effect" - the kids would not apply if their mates are unlikely to go / their parents didn't drive the issue. In any event, I think this is a red herring because May's proposal was that this issue should be addressed, perhaps even by positive discrimination as understood the tentative announcement. If that were the case and entry became independent of parental prosperity, what is there to object to?

The only people that like Grammar Schools are the people that are lucky enough to get there (and their parents).
They will also give politicians the excuse that they need to abandon swathes of young people who dont make the grade at 11 years old.

Why do the Tories insist on going back in time and seeing everything through their blue tinted glasses.

There are thousands of people who were left behind, under this type of education last time and whilst some would like to see a return, for their own personal benefit, nobody can put up a decent argument that Grammar Schools helped the majority of the kids within the education system.

If the current education system is not helping the very brightest children then lets come up with a plan to improve this but, to jettison so many, at 11 years old is just plain wrong and comes from the Tories who like to look after their "own" and to hell with the rest.

Last time this system was in vogue, there were factories and mines where the forgotten masses could work, maybe Primark and Mcdonalds are the new "coal face" as the UK manufacturing base has shrunk to almost nothing.

Pro. RL and football jettison the majority for their own ends. Let's scrap them too then. If not, why not?

So when you say 'analyse,' what you actually mean is discredit, based on the transplanting of evidence from the US; the correlation of which is quite sparse in this country.

As any fule kno, the answer to improving educational attainment and thus, social mobility, for young people, is to make *every* school an Outstanding school; that's easy to say and much more difficult to achieve, but one meaningful step could be to prevent poorly qualified politicians from using education as a political football, and interfering for electoral reasons. Like Health, it should be taken out of the adversarial political cycle altogether and handed to people who actually know what they're doing, rather than people who benefited from a privileged upbringing and want to perpetuate that cycle for the 1%.

How can every school possibly be "outstanding" best they would all be average! I agree that education has been consistently meddled with by politicians, starting with abolition of grammar. Like everything our politicians have meddled with this last 50 or so years things have got worse.The list is endless.

I think that you've answered your own question right at the start of your post with the word "pro".
Any professional sport is by it's very nature selective and rightly so but, a decent education should be there for everyone and not given by selection.
The 11 plus system looked after the few, whilst consigning the majority to mediocrity, which is just elitist rubbish.

Everyone should at least start out in life with a decent chance to succeed and not be written off at 11 years old.

As for comparing something as fundamental as a good education with professional sport, you need to give your head a shake.