A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published in early November 1989.

Your report (Oct. 28th) suggests that Kingshurst City Technology College is not to offer A-level courses because they are alleged to be “too narrow” for middle and lower ability children.  This is still further evidence, if any were needed, of the all-pervasive egalitarianism which is embedded in the administration of our State education.

Kingshurst’s Principal, Mrs Valerie Bragg, demands: “Universities will in future have to broaden their entry requirements”.  But “broaden” is a euphemism for “lower”, just as “narrow” is a euphemism for “hard”.

In fact colleges of further education all over the country find no difficulty in offering the important BTec courses for less able students which Mrs Bragg refers to alongside their A-level courses.  So why should Kingshurst find it so difficult?

Parents of Kingshurst children should realise that the International Baccalaureat which Kingshurst intends to offer is, compared with our own British A-levels in physics, chemistry and mathematics, a much inferior qualification.  It will require students wanting to enter a good university science or engineering course to do a preparatory year, as in fact Continental students on our engineering courses do at present.

Parents should ask for A-level courses and not allow themselves to be bamboozled by educational administrators and their industrialist advisers, many of whom may not have opened a textbook in 20 years, or even looked at the examination papers they so freely criticize.