Selective schooling: a friend or foe for education?

Primary friendships in Sevenoaks are being divided due to the lack of a grammar school. Photograph: Christopher Thomon/Guardian.

Moving from primary to secondary school is always a big leap – but for children in Sevenoaks, a commuter town in south east England, the jump is especially disruptive.

Despite being based in Kent, which has a selective school system, the town does not have a grammar school of its own. The situation divides young friendship groups. Pupils are scattered across the county as parents push for their children to win a grammar place in a neighbouring town, forking out as much for tuition as they can afford. Others go to Sevenoaks’ comprehensive school, Knole Academy, which, despite being rated as “good and rapidly improving” by Ofsted, still loses many high-attaining students to grammars.

But things could be about to change. The Department ofor Education is currently mulling over two rival applications by local grammar schools to open an annexe in the town, allowing them to take an additional 1,300 pupils. Legally, the proposal is tricky. Although coalition policy states that good schools can expand, the opening of new grammar schools is forbidden by English law. As the department decides whether the bid is truly an expansion – rather than an attempt to open a new school – grammars across the country look on with interest.

There aren’t many selective schools in England – just 164, most of which are based in Kent, Buckinghamshire, Slough and Trafford. But the number of students attending these schools has risen slightly over recent years.

“It’s easy for all schools to expand their intake,” says Margaret Tulloch, secretary at Comprehensive Futures, a group that campaigns against selective education.

“Grammars are now being set the same rules as everyone else. If they want to expand beyond a certain number then they need to have permission and show that they have the capacity to increase. But with smaller expansions, it’s fairly straightforward, especially in areas where there’s a rising school roll.”

School funding rules make expansion an attractive option, adds John Claughton, head of the King Edwards Foundation in Birmingham, which is growing its selective schools. “At the moment, money follows the pupil and it tends to go to students of lower achievement or lower social situation. This makes running grammars, which are also relatively small schools, very difficult economically.”

The King Edward VI Foundation plans to take on 130 more students a year across its five schools from next September. In doing so, it also hopes to address the underrepresentation of poorer students in its classrooms. In a few years’ time, Claughton wants to boost the proportion of free school meals-eligible students at his school to 20% – a far higher figure than at most grammars, where an average of 3% of pupils are usually eligible.

The school could “lower the cut off score for success (in the 11+ exam) and give priority for children who are eligible for FSM,” Claughton says. The school also plans to work closely with local communities to encourage poorer students to apply, he adds, aware that attainment isn’t the only barrier for FSM-eligible students.

According to Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) research, two thirds of children who achieve level 5 in English and maths at key stage 2 and who are not eligible for FSM go to a grammar school. This compares with only 40% of similarly high-achieving children who are eligible for FSM. And this socio-economic gap isn’t just felt by the very poorest – wealth and grammar school entry correlate throughout the income scale.

It’s for this reason that academics say the net effect of grammars is to stifle social mobility. Comparing children of similar abilities in selective and non-selective authorities, researchers at the University of Bristol found that grammar school students in selective authorities outperformed their peers in non-selective areas. Students at comprehensives in selective areas, however, performed worse than similarly qualified students living elsewhere in the country. The recent Pisa report also suggests that highly stratified systems perform worse.

“The problem is that if you have grammars then you don’t have comprehensive schools, you have secondary moderns because you don’t have the whole range of abilities in the school,” explains Mary Boyle, head of Knole Academy in Sevenoaks. “This has a big effect on the school culture and the attainment that the students can make. Students can make excellent progress, but you’re going to be restrained by the levels that they come into the schools with.”

Knole Academy already loses 40% of its pupils to Kent’s grammar schools, but if a new grammar annexe were to open closer to town it is likely that this would increase significantly. “We’d lose the top end of students, because for some reason, in Kent, the word grammar has this magic power attached to it.”

It’s rare for a non-selective school to lose such a substantial number of their potential students to grammars – just 5% do so, according to a report by the Sutton Trust. But because pupils do not necessarily live in the local authority of the grammar school they attend, grammars don’t just affect the local community. They also have a far-reaching, low-level impact on school intake across the country. Just under one third of the non-selective schools in England (32%) lose between 0 and 1% of the pupils they might have had to their selective counterparts. A further third (35%) lose between 1% and 20%. Throughout the country as a whole only about one-quarter of non-selective schools (28%) lose no students to grammar schools.

But grammar schools don’t just skew the exam performance of neighbouring comprehensives, says Boyle, she argues they damage students’ self-belief. “Children who don’t pass are deemed failures and that has a huge effect on their confidence. The first thing we have to do when they come to our school is boost their confidence, find what they’re good at and work with that. We spend a lot of time talking them up – it’s one of the most important things we do. I don’t think you can judge a child’s intellectual capacity when they’re 11 years old.”

Andrew Shilling, who has led a parent petition calling for a Sevenoaks grammar school, says his campaign is neither pro nor anti selective schools. His campaign started in 2010 when parents found that 100 local children passed the grammar exam but didn’t get a place in a selective school because there wasn’t enough room, says Shilling. “The issue is that if we do have a grammar school system – and we do here in Kent – then there need to be enough spaces for grammar school children. We want there to be enough places for kids – and to stop kids travelling so far.”

But while the parents’ campaign may be driven by local practicalities rather than ideology, it’s likely that if the application does go ahead, its consequences will stretch far across the country. “If permission is given,” says Tulloch “that will give the green light to other grammar schools.”

Selective schooling: a friend or foe for education?