Grammar schools: Back to the future?

April 8, 2017

• Topical

In September 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled her plans to lift the ban on the creation of new grammar schools in the England. She laid out her vision for a ‘truly meritocratic Britain’ that puts ‘ordinary working class people first’. In a time when attainment in English schools is falling compared with other countries, May’s proposal aims to provide a higher standard of education to a greater number of people. The idea has been strongly opposed by members of the Labour Party, such as Chuka Ummuna and by head teachers across the country as creating a two-tier education system that merely offers further advantages to already privileged children.

A grammar school is a selective state school; prospective pupils must take a test and admission is based on academic merit. The creation of new grammar schools was prevented in 1998 by the government under Tony Blair. However, there are currently 163 grammar schools that still exist in England, attended by 167,000 pupils. This is a small percentage of the 3,268 state-funded mainstream secondary schools that were recorded in a 2012 government survey, the most of which were comprehensive schools.

A report published in March this year by the House of Commons Library, suggests that grammar schools are not currently bastions of opportunity for children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds. Under 3% of pupils at grammar schools are known to be eligible for free school meals; in secondary modern schools, this figure is around 12%. Furthermore, research done for the Sutton Trust in 2008 showed that even among children who were in the top 25% of performers in their primary school, the rate of free schools meals was 2% in grammar schools, compared with 5% across all schools. Evidence such as this has lead educational charities to accuse grammar schools of being ‘socially selective’ rather than based on true meritocracy. It also suggests that if grammar schools are to function in a way that provides greater opportunities for ‘ordinary working class people’, then there might be a need for a reform of admission to ensure that the pupil demographic in grammar schools is reflective of the national one. Theresa May is yet to reveal the finer details of her plans to reinstate grammar schools, or what measures will be taken to ensure that current discrepancies in admissions are levelled out.

Grammar schools have always held a place in collective memory as a place of higher quality learning and greater academic success. In his autobiography Untold Stories, playwright Alan Bennet recounts the origins of his play The History Boys, which tells the tale of eight boys at the fictional Cutler’s Grammar School in Yorkshire and their efforts to gain places at Oxford and Cambridge. Referring to his creation of Cutler’s Grammar School, he writes: ‘I made it a grammar school only because a comprehensive school would be unlikely to be fielding Oxbridge candidates in such numbers.’

Bennett’s observations are not unfounded. Grammar schools overwhelmingly out-perform comprehensive and secondary modern schools at GCSE. In 2015 the percentage of students gaining 5 A*- C grades, including English and Maths, was 96.7, which is close to double the 49.7% achieved by secondary modern schools. The Institute of Education Policy reported in a 2016 study that when comparing pupils of a similar background, those who attended a grammar school on average achieved an estimated one third of a grade higher than those who did not. The reports on achievement in grammar schools show that they certainly do produce better results than non- selective state schools.

Although selective schools tend to produce better exams results in England, which has fuelled a move towards facilitating the creation of new grammar schools, countries that score higher than England in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings have taken alternative approaches. The UK’s overall PISA score has decline, albeit slightly, from 499 to 498 over the last three years and only 11% of its pupils are classed as ‘top performers’ compared with, for instance, Singapore’s 35%.

In a number of countries that rank highly in PISA scores, such as Finland, which came 5 th in 2016, do not have selective state schools and although there are some independent schools, they are few. Of the major English speaking countries, Canada (7 th ), New Zealand (12 th ) and Australia (14 th ) all currently rank above the UK in PISA, yet non employ a system of state-funded selective schools.

The proposed changes to allow the development of new grammar schools are controversial, and with good reason. The evidence is complex and observing correlation is never a straight forward matter when it comes to something as difficult to quantify as ‘a good education’. The grammar schools that currently do exist provide excellent pass rates at GCSE compared with non-selective schools. Yet, they take on far fewer free school meals pupils than would be demographically representative. Furthermore, when turning to other countries to see what they have made work, and what doesn’t work, selective state schools are rarely part of the picture which makes it hard to draw comparisons. The government is yet to fully outline how these new plans for grammar schools will be put in place, other than having suggested, in February this year, that they will cater for around a tenth of pupils. However, what is certain is that school reform is far from an easy puzzle to piece together.

Sources:

Alan Bennett, Untold Stories, Faber and Faber (2006).

Paul Bolton, Grammar Schools Statistics, House of Commons Library (2017).

www.oecd.org/pisa/

www.education.gov.uk

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