Government plans which could make highly performing secondary schools allocate places to pupils of mixed abilities have been slammed by Tory MEP Roger Helmer. According to Mr Helmer, the children of middle class parents are the most intelligent and should thus go to the best schools.

Government plans which could make highly performing secondary schools allocate places to pupils of mixed abilities have been slammed by Tory MEP Roger Helmer. According to Mr Helmer, the children of middle class parents are the most intelligent and should thus go to the best schools.

Helmer wrote:

“Bright parents tend to have bright kids, and able people tend to achieve in life and to gravitate towards the middle classes. Thus a preponderance of middle-class children in good schools is evidence, not of “unfairness”, but of heritable intelligence. “Schools that over the years build a reputation and achieve good results will attract both the ablest pupils and the best teachers – teachers who want to spend time enthusing children with a love of knowledge, not trying to exercise a semblance of discipline over a bunch of feckless ne’er-do-wells.”

It is not only his views on children that have got him noticed. As Left Foot Forward has reported before, Mr Helmer has a rather unsavory history: criticising charity money going to gypsy children, denying climate change and previously denying that homophobia exists.

In another case of embarrassment to hit the Conservative Party this week, Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson has declared that liberal sex education policy is to blame for recent figures showing an increase in the number of people diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STIs).

In a torrent of insults sent via his Twitter account, Stewart Jackson said that the state had “blown £300m on sex education”.

He went on to say:

“Sex education Memo to sad tedious sex obsessed Leftie weirdos – do please tweeting me You’re confusing me with someone who’s interested”

In a statement in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph yesterday, Mr Jackson said:

“I am always keen to hear from my constituents but these people were generally not even from Peterborough and were only interested in making personal attacks. “It has made me think you can’t engage with people on Twitter. If it continues I may stop using it.”

Perhaps Mr Jackson should have taken a look at the facts, as stated in the Health Protection Agency’s report. The number of people diagnosed with STIs has, in part, increased because of the number of tests and types of tests has gone up in the past year.

Dr Gwenda Hughes, head of the HPA’s STI section said:

“We are doing more testing, such as through the National Chlamydia Screening Programme, and some of the tests we are using for gonorrhoea and herpes are more sensitive, so as a result we are now picking up more infections.”

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