It is a touchy subject for the Tories: in 2007 David Cameron promised not to expand the grammar-school system, as part of his attempt to detoxify the party's image.

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Kent's grammar-school system is also very popular with parents.

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The tripartite system of grammar schools, secondary moderns and technical schools - along with the controversial 11 Plus - was the brainchild of RA Butler, Conservative President of the Board of Education in Churchill's wartime coalition.

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After promotion to lead the whole education portfolio he went on to attack Labour's grammar school policy, calling the selective system "as divisive as it is archaic" and telling MPs how 11-plus exam failures - including his brother - suffered for life.

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Adding to the stress is the complexity of the grammar, especially the far-from-perfect spelling system hellish past tense riddled with irregularities.

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There are more than 160 grammar schools left across England - the remainder of a selective system scrapped in most parts of the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Coverity's founders, four graduate students from Stanford University and their professor, recently grammar-checked the entire Linux 2.6.9 kernel operating system and found a respectably low 950 bugs in 5.5 million lines.

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