New row over selection at Blair children's school

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By Liz Lighfoot, Education Correspondent
(Filed: 19/10/2005)

The school chosen by Tony Blair for his three eldest children is at the centre of a row that threatens to torpedo Labour's commitment to parental choice and fair admissions.

The London Oratory in west London is the only state-funded day school in England that has defied the Government's ban on "selection" by interview and it is meeting prospective pupils and their parents again this month.

The Catholic secondary, where Kathryn Blair is in the sixth form, says that interviewing enables it to take pupils from across London and the social spectrum. Without it, decisions would rely on local catchment areas and unreliable references. Parents from a nearby primary school disagree, saying interviews favour articulate, middle-class people.

They have accused the London Oratory of carrying out an unfair admissions policy and now Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, must decide whether to allow the school to continue to thwart Government policy with the risk that others will follow.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20...

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. "I will never return us to selection aged 11 in our schools": Tony Blair

Way back on the 27th September, 2005