As the old school of one of the best known women in the world, the Kesteven Girls Grammar School has a reputation that extends even beyond our national borders (just as the Kings School will forever and everywhere be linked with the great name of Isaac Newton).

But what I immediately think of when someone mentions K.G.G.S. is that it is a vital educational asset for today’s children in Grantham.

A lot of people have been mentioning K.G.G.S. to me over the past few weeks – and many of them very anxiously. That is why I asked to see the chairman and deputy chairman of governors, and heard from them how they were planning to deal with a difficult, and certainly deeply worrying, situation.

The decision by the executive of the county council to phase out the scholarships for Stamford children at the Stamford Endowed Schools from 2008 threatens disaster for future generations of the town’s bright children.

There is nowhere else for them to go in Stamford which offers a full academic secondary education if their parents cannot afford to pay fees.

I have written to the leader of the council, Coun Martin Hill, asking him to reconsider this decision, and I hope all Stamfordians who care about this will do the same.

15 July 2005

Grantham Journal article

One of the curses which I promised to campaign against in my election manifesto was the way parents are forced to choose secondary schools.

It is illogical. It is educationally damaging. Worst of all, it is horribly, and quite unnecessarily, cruel.

Lincolnshire Education Authority, operating under Government diktat, forces parents to choose a secondary school before their childrens’ 11+ results are known. In short, parents have to choose blind.

At the same time, all secondary schools give preference to those who make them first choice. So if a parent’s first choice is a grammar school and the child fails the 11+ he or she will go to the back of the queue.