Fresh bid. to stop 11-plus schooling

ANTI-GRAMMAR school campaigners are to resurrect their efforts to trigger a vote which if successful could lead to the demise of the county's 11-plus system.

"Activists from the campaign group STEP - Stop The Eleven Plus - have activated the ballot process by formally submitting a request to the Electoral Reform Ballot Society asking it for details of how many signatures they need to petition for a vote.

Under the regulations on ballots, a vote can only be held if 20 per cent of eligible parents sign a petition requesting one.

By restarting the campaign now, STEP has given itself the maximum amount of time allowed to collect the signatures they need by the end of next July.

STEP chairman Becky Matthews said Kent had failed to face up to recent academic evidence that children would do better in a comprehensive system.

She said: "There are no educational arguments for retaining the 11-plus and the scare stories we heard last year about cost and chaos have been proved false. STEP will continue the campaign to end the anachronistic 11-plus test and the damaging division and labelling of children at a very young age."

The move comes just months after the group was forced to suspend its original attempt to force a vote under the Government's legislation allowing parents to determine the future of selective schooling.

That decision came after activists admitted they had collected just 7,000 of the 46,000-plus signatures "they needed to trigger a ballot.

Privately, some campaigners feel that the odds are stacked against them because of the complexity of the ballot regulations and expect the threshold to be slightly higher this time.

However, the Education Secretary David Blunkett recently signalled his willingness to make changes to some of those regulations to make the process simpler.

Support Kent Schools, the campaign group which has been set up to safeguard the grammar system, said there was no appetite among parents for change.

Spokesman Tom Veitch, a Conservative county councillor, said: "We believe this is simply prolonging the uncertainty and there is no strong feeling among parents that they wish to change the existing system." He stressed: "If a petition is started, we will encourage parents not to sign it."

If STEP does manage to secure enough signatures a ballot on the future of the county's grammars is likely to be held in the autumn of 2001.

All parents of children under the age of 16 are eligible to sign the petition and vote in any subsequent ballot.