The end of Grange Hill

In this morning's Guardian Lucy Mangan mourns the demise of Grange Hill:

You watched it in the same way that you read Bernard Ashley's books - similarly popular at the time - not so much for entertainment as for reassurance that the maelstrom of cliquery, bullying, aggression, adolescent angst into which you plunged at ten to nine every morning and from which you emerged tattered and bleeding at half past three was everybody's everyday experience. You were not the unlucky victim of a particularly malevolent god. You were simply a comprehensive school pupil.

All of which makes you wonder why that paper is quite so convinced that comprehensive education is the way forward.

I'm with Patrick West:

How on earth is Grange Hill meant to stand as an exemplar of responsible children’s television? This was the show that reflected the woeful shortcomings of the comprehensive school system in the 1970s, and simultaneously perpetuated it in the 1980s by glamorising insubordination and rudeness in the classroom.