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It’s been three years of confusion and distress, but Andrew Penman has finally found a secondary school for his son. Why is it so hard, he asks

Andrew Penman
Saturday 4 September 2010

I can pinpoint the moment the panic set in. My son Robert was eight and Tim, the father of one of his best friends, had just visited the local comprehensive. A lot of noise was coming from one classroom as he walked past, so he peered through the small window in the door. The next moment, he told me, a pupil yanked open the door, squared up to him and demanded: “What do you want?”

The school was Rutlish in Merton, south-west London. Once it had been a grammar and old boys include John Major and the author Raymond Briggs, who hated his time there, describing it as “awful and snobbish”.

I don’t think he’d find it snobbish any more. I checked the results for Rutlish: at the time just one third of pupils could scrape together five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, with a C grade or better (today that figure is 49%).….Continue Reading