The Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, announced the great news that his department is doing more for deprived British children. This is to be achieved by pouring money into the grammar schools, which cater mainly for the children of the wealthy and privileged.
It is not immediately clear how this will actually operate. So we asked junior education minister, Lady Jolly Hockeysticks, to explain.
“One would have thought it was bloody obvious,” she shrilled, in a voice that made every fox within a five-mile radius scurry for cover. “It’s The Blessed Margaret’s trickle-down effect. The best way to help people is to make them sweat for every penny. No more handouts!”
Wouldn’t it be more effective to fund schools in deprived areas directly, we ventured.
“Certainly not!” she retorted. “Local knowledge is required, and who better than local schools? Obviously the best schools will be in a position to help the rest.”
And by which criterion do you decide which schools are best?
“By exam results,” she screamed triumphantly. “Grammar schools provide the best education to the best children!”
Please define what you mean by the best children.
“Grammar schools attract the brightest and the best,” she exhorted in a schoolmarmy tone. “But quality doesn’t come cheap, so there is always a proportion of kids so rich that they can buy top grades!”
Then why the need to pump more public funds into grammar schools?
“So they can recruit token poor kids,” she declared. “As a sop to those who think we don’t care about them. Of course we care. We care so much that we are willing to subsidise wealthy quasi-private education businesses in order to encourage philanthropy.”
“It’s a return to Victorian values,” countered education expert Chalky McChalkface. “Education for the well-off, and who cares about the poor, they are all going to grow up scrounging anyway. Lady Hockeysticks wouldn’t last five minutes in an inner-city comprehensive. She would be torn to pieces like a hunted fox.”
Damian “Horse and’ Hinds was said to be delighted with the squabbling which detracted from the catastrophic mess that is Brexit. At least legions of loyal Daily Telegraph readers will wake up to a good news headline for once tomorrow.