Londoner Live: Who is the real Andy Burnham?
In two weeks, we're hosting a special Londoner event about Andy Burnham and what he really believes. The Londoner's founder Joshi Herrmann will be joined on stage by four journalists who have covered our new prime minister closely over the years: Patrick Maguire from The Times, Helen Pidd from The Guardian and Jack Dulhanty from The Mill. The panel will be chaired by Beth Rigby from Sky News, and will tackle questions like: What actually is “Manchesterism”? And what will it mean for London?
It's on Wednesday 9 September, 6pm – 7.30pm, at London Scottish House, Westminster. Tickets are £15, or just £5 for paying Londoner members. We've already sold two thirds of the tickets so make sure to grab yours now before they sell out.
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To get into London’s elite grammar schools these days, you need to be better than good. Not just top set, not simply a sharp kid, but the best of the best. Like Kabir. He was already showing the necessary promise when he left his home in India for the UK, like an academic intercontinental missile his parents were aiming towards the gilded halls of Oxford or Cambridge. He was three years old.
Next week he’ll be starting at Queen Elizabeth’s School in Barnet, one of the most sought after grammar schools in the country. I recently received a full-on press release from Kabir’s mother, Ruchi Bakliwal, detailing some of his many successes (yes, a press release). Not only had Kabir taken his Further Maths GCSE five years early, she wrote proudly, but he’d received the highest possible grade and was being featured on the BBC. For many anxious north London parents, Kabir is the competition.
Grammar schools were once a fairly normal place to send smart children, state-funded secondary schools where getting in was a case of turning up for the Eleven Plus exam — a test of maths, english, verbal and non verbal reasoning administered at the beginning of Year 6 — and hoping for the best. That’s no longer the case. In the past few weeks I’ve been speaking with parents, tutors and the grammar-hopeful children themselves, and it’s clear that the clamour for places these days has spiralled out of control.
I learned of parents selling their homes to move closer to the schools; of children developing speech impediments and soiling themselves under such extreme pressure; of toddlers being tutored for the Eleven Plus and of schools receiving four-figure donations from the parents of prospective pupils. Far from the meritocratic ideals these schools once embodied, preparing your child for the Eleven Plus these days has become more akin to the Spartan agoge: a brutal training ground for future grammar attendees where only the intellectually elite survive.
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