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Education and Inspections Bill

As, I think, the only pupil from Reading school in the Chamber—[Hon. Members: ““We rest our case.””] Very good. However, I can assure the hon. Member for Bury, North that, whatever he thinks about the intellectual attainments of individual pupils, when the admissions policy of local education authorities were more rigid and 100 per cent. of pupils who went to Reading school came from within a narrowly defined boundary of a growing town—he will know that that is often a difficulty—the school was extremely socially mixed. Many of my school friends came from deprived backgrounds, and went on to successful university careers and careers following that, precisely because they went to a very good academic grammar school. It was a force for social mobility in the town.