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This House Wants To Bring Back Grammar Schools | Debate | Cambridge Union

3,069 views · Published 3 December 2018 · 1:30:24 · Indexed 6 October 2026

Channel: Cambridge Union · 2018 · Education

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MOTION FOR THE DEBATE: This House Wants To Bring Back Grammar Schools
Grammar schools, though nominally abolished decades ago, have never left us. Similarly, they have never left our public debate. Often posited as a solution to falling standards, or declining public order, the grammar school is seen by some as a silver bullet, by others as a fatal distraction. Recent government plans to expand the campuses of grammar schools already in existence have led many to fear that these “offsite campus expansions” are new grammar schools in all but name. Are grammar schools a means of social mobility, or just state-funded private schools for the middle-classes? 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: 
PROPOSITION
Chris McGovern
Chris McGovern is chairman of the Campaign for Real Education. Chris McGovern has 35 years of teaching experience, as well as this, Chris is a qualified inspector for Ofsted. Chris has been an educational adviser to the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street under two prime ministers.
He is a regular contributor to press, TV and radio discussion of educational matters at home and abroad.

Simon Heffer
Simon Heffer is a journalist with the Daily Telegraph, but wrote formerly for the Daily Mail. He has written histories and biographies of notable British figures including Enoch Powell. He was the editor of Rightminds, an online paper attached to the Mail.

Christian Owen 
Christian Owen is a first-year student reading history at Trinity College. He won this spot through open audition.

OPPOSITION
Charles Connor
Charles Connor is this term's President of the Cambridge Union. He matriculated at King's in 2015, he read for the Historical Tripos, and is now undertaking an MPhil. He previously served at the Union as both Executive Officer and as Speakers Officer. 

Dr Mary Bousted 
Dr Mary Bousted was elected General Secretary of the ATL, a teaching Union, in 2003. For the years 2016/17 she served as President of the Trades Union Congress. She is a staunch opponent of grammar schools, in line with the stances of both her own union and the TUC.

Baroness Shirley Williams
Baroness Shirley Williams was a Labour Education Secretary before famously breaking away from the party in the ‘80s. She helped lead the SDP, became a professor at Harvard and subsequently leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. As Education Secretary, she oversaw a major programme of comprehensivisation.

ABOUT THE CAMBRIDGE UNION: From its small beginnings as a debating society, the Cambridge Union is the oldest debating society in the world and the largest student society in Cambridge. The Union remains a unique forum for the free exchange of ideas and the art of public debate.

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