Education - it's not fair!

But in truth, there are so few of them in Birmingham now (seven in total) that only something like six per cent of the total cohort get a place.
We all know educational under-performance is linked to poverty and so faced with such fierce competition it's going to be those parents who are most comfortable and are more able to focus on their child's education - perhaps even paying for private tuition to ensure they get a head start in the 11-plus exams - who dominate places.
The relatively low proportion of pupils in the five grammar schools within Birmingham's King Edward VI Foundation of five grammars on free school meals (around five per cent compared to a city average of about 34 per cent) suggests they are not finding places for those that could most benefit.
This is, of course, not necessarily the fault of the grammars which work very hard to reach out to the most deprived communities.
But for many youngsters at the bottom of the social ladder, it is already too late by then because they haven't had the intense focus they needed to get them on a level playing field.
If this Government was serious about creating "opportunities for all" and ensuring "no child gets left behind" within a fair and equal society, then logically it should disproportionately pump more cash into the most deprived primaries.
Positive discrimination is a bit of a dirty word in most spheres, but when youngsters face disadvantage at the earliest rung of the ladder it might be worth it in order to create a fairer society.
Birmingham bizarrely allows another inequality to carry on by on one hand given its support to the city's grammar schools but on the other not essentially supporting selection, which is a contradiction.
It also says it does not believe in coaching and does not allow primaries to prepare their children for the verbal reasoning tests they will need to do in the 11-plus. Which means parents who can afford to pay for coaching have a head start.
Then you have the Government which openly says it's against selection but is not prepared to do anything about it other than leave it up to locals to decide whether they want or do not want grammar schools in their area.
It's a cop out and the level of support needed for locals to challenge them is impossibly high.
What this all boils down to is human nature. At least human nature post-Thatcher. For we live in a more selfish and competitive environment now in which we all fight to get the best deal for ourselves.
The Blair era was merely the next more socially acceptable face of this, but its emphasis on choice and diversity essentially amounts to the same thing.
Those who run our country today are no longer conviction politicians but careerist - and they know to upset the mass ranks of the middleclasses (and practically all of us with a job are middleclass now!) created by Thatcher is political suicide.
And so we have a situation where we have a group within society that is more deprived and disaffected than ever before with politicians too afraid to upset the new masses and continued unaddressed inequality within education.