tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/grammar-schools-7598/articlesGrammar schools – The Conversation2023-06-19T14:57:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024162023-06-19T14:57:28Z2023-06-19T14:57:28ZThe shift from grammar schools to comprehensives had little effect on social mobility in England<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531345/original/file-20230612-26322-dhjbxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C15%2C4652%2C3387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-high-school-student-working-desk-1297777537">Air Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2022-a-fresh-approach-to-social-mobility/state-of-the-nation-2022-chapter-2-mobility-outcomes#mobility-outcomes-in-the-future">Research shows</a> that in the past 50 years, social class mobility – how a person’s occupation, social class or income compares with that of their parents – has either increased or stayed static in the UK. </p>
<p>But social mobility chances vary substantially depending on where you grow up and move to later in life, as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12885">our research</a> has shown to be the case in the England and Wales.</p>
<p>The UK government has <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523546/bis-16-265-success-as-a-knowledge-economy-web.pdf">often relied on</a> <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/221007/HMG_SocialMobility_acc.pdf">education policy</a> to try to <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/668111/Social_Mobility_Action_Plan_2017_schematic.pdf">improve these geographic inequalities</a>. This is often based on the fact that those with better education have improved life outcomes, including occupation, salary and health. </p>
<p>There’s also a looser, intuitive sense that education simply must be the right tool. What better way to counter social stagnation than to improve children’s education? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537123000118">Our research</a> has examined the effect on social mobility of one of the biggest education policy shifts of the 20th century in England: the move away from the grammar school system towards comprehensive schools.</p>
<p>We found little evidence to support the idea that either selective or comprehensive schooling improved overall social mobility outcomes. This shows that it cannot be assumed that education policy will boost social mobility. </p>
<h2>The grammar system</h2>
<p>Between 1945 and the 1970s, England and Wales had a selective schooling system where primary school pupils were allocated to an academically focused grammar school if they passed an ability test taken at the age of ten or 11. If they did not pass they would instead attend a secondary modern school or technical college. </p>
<p><a href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.PDF">Grammar schools</a> were intended to pick out the best and brightest at an early age, regardless of their social background. But they have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34538222">also been criticised</a> for reinforcing social division, because wealth <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/13/grammar-schools-dominated-by-the-wealthy-dfes-own-data-shows">appears to be</a> a strong driver of grammar school attendance. </p>
<p>This system was eventually phased out in favour of mixed-ability education in comprehensive schools, and this shift occurred differently in different areas. By the early 1980s only a few local authorities maintained some form of selectivity. Today, <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07070/">163 grammar schools</a> remain. </p>
<p><strong>Average school selectivity by local education authority over time</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three maps of England and Wales map showing an ever decreasing proportion of selective schooling percentages in local education authorities" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526200/original/file-20230515-19-5pfn46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Average School Selectivity by Local Education Authority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Buscha, F., Gorman, E. and Sturgis, P. 2023. Selective schooling and social mobility in England. Labour Economics. 81 102336.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>We looked at the social class mobility of a representative sample of more than 90,000 people over five decades. We found that the abolition of so many grammar schools in the 1960s and 1970s did little to change overall social mobility levels. Social mobility levels did rise during this period, but our analysis found no link to the rapidly changing nature of the school system. </p>
<h2>Other factors at play</h2>
<p>When comparing education and earning outcomes of young people educated in grammar schools to those educated in comprehensive schools, <a href="https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2019/06/long-term-outcomes-do-grammar-schools-make-a-difference/">analysis has found</a> some better outcomes for those attending grammar schools. But other factors, such as parental education, family income and the area where the family lives, are difficult to account for and may have had a role in these better outcomes.</p>
<p>Because our study looked at variation in school system both across areas and over time, we were able to use statistical techniques which can account for such factors and the effects of broader societal trends over time. This provides more credible results.</p>
<p>For the purpose of education policy, the key question should be about how to design the broader school system for the benefit of all pupils – rather than a narrow focus on outcomes for those who do gain a place at a grammar school. The outcomes of those who missed out on a grammar school place are important too. Our research addresses this by studying the effects of the schooling system as a whole.</p>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-4446.12138">Past research</a> by one of us (Franz Buscha) looked at a similarly important change in education – the raising of the school leaving age in 1972 from 15 to 16. This changed also showed little statistical effect on social mobility. This means that taken together, the two most powerful educational interventions in the 20th century did not result in significant changes in social mobility. </p>
<p>This raises questions about the broader societal impact of education policy more generally. We are not saying that education is not worth investing in, or has no prospects to improve life outcomes. But for these specific policies, we might have expected large effects – and did not find them. </p>
<p>Designing effective education policy is difficult, but important. Education affects our social, emotional and cognitive skills, as well as our earnings and employment. But role of education in driving social mobility is complex, and education cannot be focused on in isolation – as factors such as early life circumstances and socioeconomic status are also crucial in shaping life outcomes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Franz Buscha received funding from the ESRC via grant ES/R00627X/1. The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to disclose. The permission of the Office for National Statistics to use the Longitudinal Study is gratefully acknowledged, as is the assistance provided by staff of the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information & User Support (CeLSIUS). CeLSIUS is supported by the ESRC under project ES/V003488/1.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Gorman received funding from the ESRC via grant ES/R00627X/1. The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to disclose. The permission of the Office for National Statistics to use the Longitudinal Study is gratefully acknowledged, as is the assistance provided by staff of the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information & User Support (CeLSIUS). CeLSIUS is supported by the ESRC under project ES/V003488/1.</span></em></p>It cannot be assumed that education policy will boost social mobility.Franz Buscha, Professor of Economics, University of WestminsterEmma Louise Gorman, Senior Research Fellow, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1241412019-09-27T14:43:45Z2019-09-27T14:43:45ZWould abolishing private schools really make a difference to equality?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294540/original/file-20190927-185375-llkcyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C28%2C6134%2C4139&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pupils-computer-class-teacher-480125899">Shutterstock/SpeedKingz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For some, the British private school system evokes images of rolling playing fields and academic excellence that can pave the way to an elite university education and a prosperous life. For others it simply cements societal injustice and inter-generational inequality.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the UK’s Labour party is now in the latter camp. And at its recent national conference it endorsed a series of measures that would effectively see <a href="https://theconversation.com/abolishing-private-schools-is-admirable-but-wont-make-choosing-a-state-one-any-easier-for-parents-124111">private education abolished</a>.</p>
<p>The proposal would see endowments – or recurrent income from past benefactors – of wealthy private schools “nationalised”. The money would then be used to help subsidise the integration of private schools into the state-funded system. </p>
<p>Creating one system of schools for all would have many potential benefits. For a start it might mean that more high attaining pupils, currently in private schools, would be role models for a wider range of fellow pupils. It might also help to improve social cohesion and foster understanding by creating <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/education-policy">a better mix of young citizens</a> who will work together in the future. </p>
<p>The better-off parents currently using private schools could add their support to the operation and improvement of their local state schools. And it would enable a large number of issues to be standardised – such as teacher qualifications, provision of extracurricular activities, access to sporting facilities and safeguarding. </p>
<p>Some commentators, though, <a href="https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/its-absolutely-insane-212917/">claim the idea is rooted in envy</a> and will damage something valuable and traditional in education. Others have said it is not feasible – that <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d93922e6-dde8-11e9-b112-9624ec9edc59">the costs would be too great</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7496721/Eton-headmaster-SIMON-HENDERSON-slams-Labours-plan-abolish-private-schools.html">Critics have also pointed</a> out that <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f0e7b158-deb7-11e9-b112-9624ec9edc59">private schools already offer free</a> and assisted places to a small number of disadvantaged pupils – or open their facilities for use by nearby state schools. And others have <a href="https://theconversation.com/get-rid-of-private-schools-wed-be-better-tackling-inequalities-between-state-schools-121805">proposed more modest changes</a> such as ending the charitable status and tax exemption of many of the richer schools. </p>
<h2>Are private schools better?</h2>
<p>Private schools come in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X030007018">all shapes and sizes</a>. Many are small, with few facilities and these are often accommodated in converted residential accommodation. Quite a few are religious. And some buy in (often from the US) their own curriculum and teaching materials. </p>
<p>In general, these schools don’t take very privileged children, and do not produce notably high attainment results. Quite a large number are special schools, or even hospitals – taking in young people with some of the severest learning or physical challenges.</p>
<p>That said, the majority of privately educated pupils attend larger, more established and popularly successful schools – though <a href="https://mailchi.mp/a7aa2d643ebe/abolisheton">few of these are like Eton</a>. Most are coeducational, non-selective, day schools, with somewhat smaller class sizes than in the state sector, but otherwise not very remarkable. </p>
<h2>Top results?</h2>
<p>A number of private schools have among some of <a href="https://ukguardianship.com/best-independent-schools-in-the-uk-gcse-league-table-2018/">the highest exam results</a> in the country. Though this is not entirely surprising as not only do private schools have better facilities and smaller classroom sizes, but the state sector also has special schools and pupil referral units making up a proportion of its exam grades. </p>
<p>Indeed, more than 20 years of educational research shows that the results of any school are <a href="https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/Do_parental_involvement_interventions_increase_attainment1.pdf">largely determined</a> by the nature of their pupil intake. That is to say, grammar schools do not produce better results, they simply <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2018.1443432">select the most pupils who are already achieving higher levels academically</a>. Schools in the north of England are not worse than those in the south, they simply have <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244018825171">more long-term disadvantaged pupils</a>. </p>
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<p>Across the state sector, any difference in results can be explained by the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244018825171">prior attainment and challenges that pupil’s face</a>. And although the data is less complete for private schools, <a href="https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/J05587-BERA-RI-140-Interactive-02.pdf">there is no reason to expect anything different</a>.</p>
<h2>Reform the state sector</h2>
<p>So if private schools are no better for pupils, perhaps abolishing them would make no difference either way. It would not create a crisis of attainment, but neither would it enhance equality – as the same privileged pupils will still have high attainment at state schools. And those pupils will still dominate subsequent opportunities based on having higher grades. </p>
<p>Some richer parents might also opt for home education, paying for tuition, and banding together to fund extra-curricular activities. The result would be the same as now. Indicating that schools themselves may not really be the issue. </p>
<p>Perhaps then it would be better to address the sharp inequalities in school access in the state system and move towards a position where there isn’t an incentive to spend money on private education. But for this to happen laws and procedures for all schools would need to be equalised. </p>
<p>Private schools would need to be made more transparent, provide more data and be required to use qualified teachers. At the same time faith-based, grammars and all other “diverse” kinds of schools should be phased out – and one school format decided upon.</p>
<p>Above all, successive administrations and secretaries of education need to <a href="https://theconversation.com/abolishing-private-schools-is-admirable-but-wont-make-choosing-a-state-one-any-easier-for-parents-124111">stop creating or expanding new types</a> of state schools – and instead use the clear evidence which shows that the tax-payer funded, SAT-tested, Ofsted-inspected schools are <a href="https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/Do_parental_involvement_interventions_increase_attainment1.pdf">all about as good as each other</a>. And that paying for a private school simply to get an advantage in terms of exam results is a waste of money.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gorard was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council to investigate school intakes and outcomes</span></em></p>There’s no evidence that private schools produce better results than state schools for equivalent pupils.Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/965842018-12-12T12:09:42Z2018-12-12T12:09:42ZGrammars receive £50m boost, while primary and secondary schools rely on cash donations from parents<p>A handful of grammar schools are to receive a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/03/campaigners-criticise-50m-fund-for-grammar-schools-expansion">£50m boost to expand their pupil numbers</a>. To qualify for the funding, schools had to submit plans on how they would try and increase the number of poorer pupils. </p>
<p>In total, 16 grammar schools are to be given a share of the £50m selective school expansion fund to create 4,000 additional places for pupils from the poorest backgrounds, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/grammar-schools-given-50m-diversity-cash-have-only-2-poor-pupils-fh56rwnjr">according to The Times</a>.</p>
<p>But the move has come under fire after <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/education/grammar-school-funding-diversity-50m/">it was revealed</a> that just 2% of their pupils admitted to the grammar schools awarded the funding classify as disadvantaged. Headteachers at cash-strapped comprehensive schools also spoke out in protest – given that in real terms, per-pupil spending is <a href="https://theconversation.com/headteachers-march-the-school-funding-protests-explained-104012">in significant decline</a>. This has led to many headteachers increasingly <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/schools-amazon-wishlists_uk_5b23cbcae4b07cb1712ddcd8">asking parents for cash donations</a>, with some schools forced to cut staff. </p>
<p>The announcement has reignited a heated debate over the merits of selection at 11+ in the English schools system. Those <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-grammar-schools-remain-so-popular-49248">in favour of grammar schools</a> say they are a positive influence on the quality of education and the standards achieved by children who attend schools in selective areas. <a href="https://theconversation.com/grammar-schools-debate-four-key-questions-answered-74274">Those against say</a> they are socially divisive and remnants of an outdated system that disproportionately benefits middle class children.</p>
<h2>‘Unjust’ and ‘unfair’</h2>
<p>Stories of working class children whose life chances have been transformed by attending a grammar school may be aplenty, but anecdotes supporting social mobility arguments don’t make for good policy. </p>
<p>There would also be something wrong if high performing grammar schools <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-theresa-may-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-grammar-schools-65360">couldn’t get good results</a> for very able children – which indeed they do – even if those children come from disadvantaged backgrounds. But <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=34136">research shows</a> that children who attend grammars do not perform any better than they would in a high performing comprehensive school.</p>
<p>Working with research assistant, Ella Jakeway, I analysed some of the issues around areas that fall under the grammar school system – using data from the <a href="https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/">Department for Education</a>. And the data demonstrates the potentially damaging impact grammar schools can have on a local area.</p>
<p>In many selective local authority areas the gap between rich and poor only gets wider. The worst case is Buckinghamshire, a wholly selective authority, where the progress made across eight subjects by disadvantaged children is on average three quarters of a grade less than that of the more affluent children. This would suggest a selective system is not benefiting all children, and may in fact be harming the prospects of some. </p>
<h2>Working the system</h2>
<p>When analysing the data, we looked carefully at the characteristics of children attending school in selective authorities, and discovered a phenomenon that appears to challenge the social mobility argument for grammar schools. </p>
<p>We looked at the numbers of disadvantaged children in a given local authority at the end of primary school, and measured how that had changed by the time those children reach the age of 16. We found children crossed borders to neighbouring authorities to a much higher degree than expected. The number of disadvantaged children in Buckinghamshire, for example, drops by more than a third by the end of secondary school even though the total number of children increases. This is because the net movement into selective areas is driven by the middle classes.</p>
<p>The county seems to have a huge influx of middle class secondary aged children coming in, while some disadvantaged pupils attend non-selective schools in neighbouring authorities. By way of contrast, some of the lowest performing local authorities show a significant increase in numbers of deprived children.</p>
<h2>A measure of privilege</h2>
<p><a href="http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01398/SN01398.pdf">The latest government statistics</a> show the number of children in selective grammar schools has risen steadily since an all-time low in 1986 (3%) to 5.2% today. And the new £50m cash boost to a handful of schools could increase that number to more than 6%. </p>
<p>But it is by no means clear how the expansion could be limited to the most disadvantaged children nor how this could be maintained over time. The danger is that the extra places will simply encourage more children to travel further to school – the travel time for pupils at grammar schools is already <a href="https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Grammar-schools-and-social-mobility_.pdf">double that of those at non-selective schools</a>. </p>
<p>That said, my own research and that of others suggests the biggest factor that determines a child’s outcomes at 16 is not whether they attend a comprehensive or grammar school, but their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools">family’s socioeconomic status</a>. And this introduces educational differences even before children begin formal schooling. Ultimately then it would seem that grammar schools risk making what is already an unbalanced and uneven situation simply more unjust and unfair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Rolph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Grammars have received a £50m funding boost, while at the same time many primary and secondary schools are resorting to Amazon Wish Lists to fund basic supplies.Chris Rolph, Principal Lecturer in Education, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979612018-06-13T12:13:17Z2018-06-13T12:13:17ZThe psychological impact of the grammar school test – new research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222608/original/file-20180611-191974-1vchedj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Grammar schools are never far from the headlines and the BBC’s new mini-series, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b57ynx">Grammar Schools: Who will Get In</a> sheds further light on the selective schooling system, at a time when the prime minister, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-theresa-may-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-grammar-schools-65360">Theresa May, plans to expand it</a>.</p>
<p>The series follows pupils at three schools in Bexley, south London – which has a fully selective education system. The children featured in the programme showed high levels of anxiety and articulated fears that failing the 11+ exam will make them “a failure in life”.</p>
<p>Children who go to grammar schools may <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmpo/migrated/documents/wp150.pdf">achieve better GCSE results</a>.
But of course, not all children can attend grammar school – and the selection of the children who do attend is fraught with difficulty. Not all children are given the opportunity to take the 11+ – in some counties, only those who are selected by the teachers as likely to pass will take the exam – and of these children between <a href="https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schools/regions">25-50% of children will pass</a>. </p>
<p>Our <a href="http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/2276/">recent research</a> demonstrates the negative impact the 11+ can have on children as they move towards transition to secondary school. We asked children to complete questionnaires when they had decided whether to take the 11+ exam, and again when they had received their results. We asked children about their self-esteem, feelings of control and attitudes towards school. We also asked what they thought about intelligence – whether it is innate, or something that can be developed. </p>
<p>This is important, as <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve">research</a> suggests some people think intelligence is “fixed” – with certain people being naturally cleverer. Other people believe intelligence is malleable and can change with effort and techniques. Because of the focus on things people can do to improve, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Summary-Mindset-Takeaways-Analysis-Review-ebook/dp/B011QL01CS">a malleable view of intelligence</a> has been linked to positive educational outcomes, such as working hard in school, persisting in the face of setbacks and choosing challenging goals.</p>
<h2>The results explained</h2>
<p>The 11+ exam promotes an extreme fixed view of intelligence. In effect, children are given the message that their performance in a primary school exam can be used to predict their future academic achievement. </p>
<p>We found that children who intended to take the exam felt more positive about themselves and school. But they were also more likely to see intelligence as fixed. When they got their results, children who passed also felt more positive about themselves and school, but again had a fixed view of intelligence – this is most likely because they have been shown to be the “clever” children. </p>
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<p>Children who were not selected to take the exam, or who failed, felt equally negative about themselves and school – which suggests that being told you are likely to fail is as damaging to self-perceptions as actually failing. On top of this, children who did not pass the test were more likely to believe that intelligence can be developed over time. This is probably because believing intelligence is fixed – and that you are not one of the “clever” children – is likely to make you to feel very negative about yourself. </p>
<p>This shows how passing the exam does not necessarily lead to completely positive outcomes – as the fixed view of intelligence may make the transition to secondary school work more challenging. On the other hand, while those who failed or did not sit the exam felt more negative about themselves and school, their more malleable view of intelligence may help them to cope better with the challenges of secondary school work. </p>
<h2>The reality of the exam</h2>
<p>The 11+ exam is meant to tap into “natural ability” and was <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2306856">designed so that performance could not be improved</a> by tutoring. This was thought to give all children an equal opportunity to pass and gain a place in a good school. Though in reality, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-07754-002">many middle class children</a> are tutored for the exam and <a href="http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/82559/">are more likely to pass</a>.</p>
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<p>Of course, this is not to say that other educational systems do not have similar inequalities. In areas of the country without the 11+ exam – where children attend school based on their postcode – areas with better schools have markedly higher house prices. And similar patterns have been shown in other <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-selective-schooling-work-anywhere-in-the-world-65252">countries across the world</a>.</p>
<p>If the grammar school system is to continue, then perhaps a better way of selecting children would be to use regular measures of student progress. This would help to reduce anxiety around the exam – and may also help children to realise that intelligence is something they can develop over time – and that with hard work and support, everyone can “grow” their intelligence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Skipper received funding from the ESRC to conduct this research, which was part of a broader project exploring the impact of social influences on student learning. </span></em></p>How the grammar school selection process impacts children’s self-perceptions and view of intelligence.Yvonne Skipper, Lecturer in Psychology, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/939572018-03-27T09:35:05Z2018-03-27T09:35:05ZGrammar schools damage social cohesion and make no difference to exam grades — new research<p>The evidence against grammar schools mounts again. Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2018.1443432">new research</a> shows that grammars are no better or worse than non-selective state schools in terms of their pupils’ progress in attainment. </p>
<p>Our research analysed over half a million pupil records and found that although grammar schools don’t tend to make much of a difference to children’s school performance compared to other schools, they can be very damaging to social cohesion. This is because grouping more able and privileged children in grammars then impacts on the remaining majority of children attending nearby schools.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/grammar-schools-private-schools-gcse-exams-kings-college-london-kcl-a8269086.html">Recent smaller studies</a> have also shown that grammar schools are no more effective than non-selective schools – once their intake differences are taken into account. </p>
<p>The apparent success of grammar schools is due to pupils coming from more advantaged social backgrounds, and already having higher academic attainment at age 11. </p>
<h2>The great grammar revival</h2>
<p>The Conservative party fought the 2017 election with a manifesto promising to increase the number of grammar schools and selective places at existing schools. There are currently 163 existing grammar schools in England, and although a new law would have to be passed to allow this number to grow, these schools are already <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/02/number-pupils-grammar-schools-hits-new-high-official-figures/">steadily increasing their intakes</a>. The numbers have jumped from 110,000 11 to 15-year-olds at grammar schools in 2010 to 118,000 in 2018.</p>
<p>These schools are relatively popular with parents in the few local authorities that retain them – although most areas also have <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/parent-group-campaigns-to-ban-11-plus-1179007.html">opposition pressure groups</a>. But given that our new findings indicate grammar schools offer no benefit to pupil progress, it’s clear that a policy of increasing selection within the schools system is dangerous for equality in society.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212158/original/file-20180327-109193-ac7wv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Grammar school pupils achieve no more than pupils at non-selective schools, the study reveals.</span>
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<p>Our research is based on a review of international literature and analysis of all pupils at school in England between 2014 and 2016. The data comes from the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-pupil-database">National Pupil Database</a> for England – and contains around 600,000 pupils with complete records for each year. Using prior attainment and newly derived indicators of disadvantage – such as how long any pupil has been eligible for free schools meals – it is possible to predict these pupils’ Key Stage 4 results with over 67% accuracy. </p>
<p>Adding knowledge of whether each pupil is in a grammar school, or in an area containing grammar schools, or not, makes no difference. As far as we can tell, a talented child selected for grammar school at age 11 will attain the same examination results at age 16 as if they had attended a comprehensive school. This finding alone is enough to mean that grammar schools should be dismantled rather than expanded. </p>
<h2>Grammar schools and social segregation</h2>
<p>The process of selecting pupils based on their academic ability at a young age leads to schools becoming segregated by social, ethnic, economic and other characteristics – such as poverty, special needs, ethnicity, first language, as well as the pupil’s age in their year. </p>
<p>Pupils with special educational needs (SEN) make up 4% of the school population in England and in areas with grammar schools. But only 0.3% of pupils with SEN <a href="http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01398/SN01398.pdf">go to grammar schools</a>. Similarly, only 2% of the intake to grammar schools is <a href="http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01398/SN01398.pdf">eligible for free school meals</a> compared to 15% in the areas surrounding them, and in England as a whole. This means that schools near grammar schools end up with a lot more than their fair share of pupils with SEN and pupils who receive free school meals. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212160/original/file-20180327-109172-1pbwrm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Grammar school success ‘down to privilege’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=wKZdA4j3DM6LM6eG19mWOA-1-20">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In areas that have grammar schools, pupils living in the most disadvantaged parts are less likely to attend a grammar even where they have <a href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/Grammar_Schools2013.pdf">high prior attainment scores</a>. Perhaps most tellingly, grammar school intakes are also skewed towards pupils who are older in their year, meaning that summer born pupils are more clustered in nearby schools. </p>
<p>Then there is also the fact that authorities with the worst social segregation between schools, all have high levels of <a href="http://policypress.co.uk/education-policy">selection in their area</a>. </p>
<h2>The damage of grammar schools</h2>
<p>But this is not just a UK issue, as <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/news/thoughtleadership/?itemno=28879">evidence shows</a> that the disproportionate clustering of students within schools in terms of their ability, is a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=selective+schooling+worldwide&oq=selective+schooling+worldwide&aqs=chrome..69i57.4290j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">matter of concern worldwide</a>.</p>
<p>All other things being equal, research shows that school systems across the world with higher levels of segregation of students by their parental income or immigrant status have been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.2014.930091">linked to lower overall attainment</a> and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831215621786">weaker progress</a> wherever this has been assessed.</p>
<p>It is also likely that children going to school in segregated areas will have <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X13495087">less qualified teachers</a>. This can lead to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X15603982">reduced opportunities to learn</a>. </p>
<p>The school mix by socioeconomic status even seems to negatively influence how students are treated in school, as well as teachers’ expectations, and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09243453.2014.988731">their relationships with pupils</a>. This socioeconomic schooling divide also seems to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Overcoming-Disadvantage-in-Education/Gorard-See/p/book/9780415536905">have a negative impact</a> on wider non-cognitive outcomes, such as emotional and behavioural problems, students’ sense of justice, civic knowledge and engagement. </p>
<p>All of which shows that dividing children by their ability levels from an early age, does not appear to lead to better results for either group. This is not to decry the schools that are currently grammars, or the work of their staff. It simply shows that the kind of social segregation experienced by children in certain areas in England exists for no clear gain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gorard receives funding from the ESRC to work on the nature of disadvantage at school - Grant number ES/N012046/1 </span></em></p>The apparent success of grammar schools is simply due to pupils coming from more advantaged social backgrounds and already having higher academic attainment at age 11.Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/799672017-06-26T09:58:22Z2017-06-26T09:58:22ZMay’s ‘meritocracy’ might be on hold, but the ideas behind it are here to stay<p>In the aftermath of the shocking general election result, it seems that significant elements of Theresa May’s manifesto <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/21/theresa-may-drops-key-manifesto-pledges-from-queens-speech">have been scrapped</a>. As the Conservative government struggles to cobble together enough support to advance its agenda in a precariously balanced House of Commons, controversial measures such as the pledge to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40354365">re-introduce selective education</a> have been cast aside. </p>
<p>The reintroduction of grammar schools in particular formed the core component of May’s pledge to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">transform Britain</a> into the “world’s great meritocracy”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What kind of society do we want to be? … I want Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow.</p>
<p>I want us to be a country where everyone plays by the same rules; where ordinary, working class people have more control over their lives and the chance to share fairly in the prosperity of the nation.</p>
<p>And I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege; where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But does this mark the end of meritocracy in Britain? A history of the concept suggests otherwise.</p>
<p>The term “meritocracy” was first coined by the British sociologist Michael Young in his 1958 book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e_rTyIMJR9kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Rise+of+the+Meritocracy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiXzt_zn9TUAhULIcAKHbo1D1UQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Rise of the Meritocracy</a>. A powerful piece of dystopian fiction, it describes a society organised according to the formula “IQ + Effort = Merit” – a place where those born without the intelligence or the capacity to work hard are cast aside, while those lucky enough to possess ambition and a high IQ are showered with resources and propelled up the social ladder.</p>
<p>In this world, the elite feel they deserve their exalted position, and hoard ever more rewards for themselves. And as intelligence is passed from one generation to the next, the meritocrats pull up the ladder, ultimately becoming a repressive, heartless and distant ruling caste.</p>
<p>Young was on the political left. Before he published The Rise of the Meritocracy, he had authored Labour’s 1945 manifesto – boldly titled Let Us Face the Future – and served as head of the party’s research department. But by the time he came to write The Rise of the Meritocracy, he’d become increasingly disillusioned with Labour’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education">commitment</a> to “big-state” socialism and its support for the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/">tripartite system of secondary education</a>, under which children were “streamed” into three different types of school depending on their performance at the 11-plus exam. </p>
<p>Young wanted to highlight the significant shortcomings of equality of opportunity and encourage the left to think harder about the kind of egalitarianism they supported. But despite the potent dystopianism of his vision, they didn’t heed his warning.</p>
<h2>Aspiration rewarded</h2>
<p>For Labour’s Harold Wilson, who became prime minister in 1964, transforming Britain into a meritocracy was essential if the country was to <a href="http://www.fabians.org.uk/wilsons-white-heat/">harness</a> what he called the “white heat of the technological revolution”. As he saw it, meritocracy would replace Britain’s amateurish, gentlemanly culture with a new class system that rewarded brains and effort. These “new men” (and they were almost invariably men) would deliver economic growth and raise the standard of living for the entire country. By trusting the dispassionate meritocrats to run the national economy, all Britons would benefit.</p>
<p>With the end of the 1960s, the rise of comprehensive schools and a significant economic downturn, it appeared meritocracy would be consigned to the scrapheap of history, a forgotten buzz-word to describe the idealism of a bygone age. The concept, it seemed, failed to speak to a period characterised by political instability and social upheaval.</p>
<p>It returned to the political agenda, however, as a relatively under-explored component of Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979. The rise of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zqp7tyc">grocer’s daughter</a> seemed like the most meritocratic of political careers, and was a key organising principle for the sort of society she wanted to build: a nation which rewarded aspirational, risk-taking entrepreneurs. Gone, therefore, was meritocracy’s association with economic growth, technical expertise and detached experts.</p>
<p>Meritocracy’s high-water mark, however, came under New Labour. For Tony Blair, the concept helped to distance his party from both the zealous statism of the old left and the social fissures created by Thatcherism. As he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/may/14/election2001.uk">said in 2001</a>: “We are not crypto-Thatcherites. We are not old-style socialists. We are what we believe in. We are meritocrats.” Michael Young, still keeping an eye on British politics, was less than enamoured with these sorts of banal statements, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment">lamented</a> Blair’s failure to recognise the “dangers of what he is advocating”. </p>
<p>But the meaning of meritocracy had shifted a lot in the decades since Young’s 1958 vision. Instead of creating a benevolent new class of elite technocrats to govern in the common interest, the word was invoked by the likes of Blair and David Cameron as shorthand for a society which rewarded those who responded to the needs of the free market. </p>
<p>While May might have <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-queens-speech-whats-in-it-and-whats-out-79858">curbed</a> her explicitly meritocratic plans for the 2017 Queen’s speech, the concept she subscribes to hasn’t lost its rhetorical and political force. In the short term, its relevance depends on whether Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour can win over the public with its <a href="https://theconversation.com/be-it-bold-or-foolish-the-labour-manifesto-at-least-offers-voters-a-real-choice-77829?sr=11">more expansive form of egalitarianism</a>, which focuses more broadly on equality of resources and state support.</p>
<p>But then again, the ideas that animate British meritocracy have been counted out before. For all that Labour’s vision seems to be cutting through while May slims her plans down, meritocratic ideas will surely be front and centre again before too long.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Civil receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. </span></em></p>The notion of an society organised on merit has held Britain in its sway for decades.David Civil, PhD Researcher (Conceptual History of Meritocracy), University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/742742017-03-21T14:44:24Z2017-03-21T14:44:24ZGrammar schools debate: four key questions answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161651/original/image-20170320-9147-nk50uh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lifting the lid on grammar schools.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few subjects generate as much controversy in England as grammar schools do. Advocates uphold them as “a driver of social mobility” with the belief they can provide a ladder of opportunity for poor but able children. </p>
<p>Critics on the other hand, see them as socially divisive; the remnants of an outdated system that disproportionately benefits middle class children, while labelling others as “failures” early in their educational careers.</p>
<p>But while people hold strong opinions on the benefits (or otherwise) of grammar schools, these opinions are often not actually underpinned by a robust evidence base – research showing a clear answer either way doesn’t actually exist. </p>
<p>And because there is (and always has been) such a mixture of school types in England, it is impossible to get a clear picture of the system-wide benefits and drawbacks of selective education.</p>
<p>So with this in mind, I have answered some of the key questions surrounding the grammar school debate using evidence both for and against selective schooling.</p>
<h2>1. Do grammars provide better opportunities for bright but poor students?</h2>
<p>It is clear that grammar schools get better results in examinations than schools that do not select according to academic ability. But then it would be extremely surprising if they did not. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3443191?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Early studies</a> suggest that boys from working class backgrounds did less well at grammar school than their middle class peers. But <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-policy/article/div-classtitlehalseya-h-heatha-f-and-ridgej-m-origins-and-destinations-family-class-and-education-in-modern-britain-oxford-university-press-clarendon-oxford-1980-240-pp-1100-paper-495div/33B1C18D6E1757C4B9692AD0B22F76B2">long-term research</a> indicates that working class children still derived significant career gains from going to grammar school. </p>
<p>The problem though with arguments about the “ladder of opportunity” that grammar schools are alleged to provide, is that relatively few poor students – academically able or otherwise – are actually in grammar schools. Certainly those few state-maintained grammar schools that remain in England have very low numbers of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/15/very-small-percentage-of-grammar-school-pupils-from-poorer-families-new-statistics-show">children eligible for free school meals</a>. </p>
<h2><strong>2. Do grammar schools disproportionately benefit middle class children?</strong></h2>
<p>“Yes” – and “no”. Middle class children are disproportionately <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/Grammar_Schools2013.pdf#page=25">represented in grammar schools</a>, but a place in a grammar school <a href="https://theconversation.com/grammar-schools-why-academic-selection-only-benefits-the-very-affluent-74189">is by no means guaranteed</a> even for those with “professional” parents.</p>
<p>Between 1945 and the 1970s – at the height of the “tripartite system” – children were allocated to three types of school: grammar, technical and secondary modern. And under this system, over half of those from the groups known as “social classes I and II” <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YSJEBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=Swift,+D.+(1965)+%E2%80%98Meritocratic+and+social+class+selection+at+age+11%E2%80%99,+Educational+Research,+8&source=bl&ots=PJLGiT_087&sig=MQF1rNDkl3M-cVPtMPf1r77f5Y0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7lrutyufSAhXKKMAKHUOaCVgQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=Swift%2C%20D.%20(1965)%20%E2%80%98Meritocratic%20and%20social%20class%20selection%20at%20age%2011%E2%80%99%2C%20Educational%20Research%2C%208&f=false">failed the 11+</a> – the exam children need to pass to attend grammar schools. </p>
<p>These groups of parents, with managerial and professional occupations, found that children they had that were consigned to secondary modern schools faced very limited opportunities for getting good qualifications and entry to university. </p>
<p>It has also <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6biEAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Ford,+J.+(1969).+Social+class+and+the+comprehensive+school.+London:+Routledge+and+Kegan+Paul.&ots=6mNgo_hhtP&sig=UypPzNPM8dVwAqG6-hiV5KWxa6s#v=onepage&q&f=false">previously been argued</a> that disappointed middle class parents were one of the driving forces behind “comprehensivation”. This involved getting rid of the 11+ examination which sorted children into different schools and instead encouraged all children to go to their nearest secondary school – irrespective of their academic ability.</p>
<p>And in a similar vein, a recent <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/15/two-thirds-people-would-send-their-child-grammar-s/">opinion poll</a> showed that parents are only likely to support grammars if their child gets a place. </p>
<h2>3. What happens to those who fail to get into grammar schools?</h2>
<p>Secondary schools in the vicinity of a grammar schools will inevitably lose some of the most academically able children in the neighbourhood. But of course, the general weakening of school catchment areas – with the existence of private schools in England – means that there is already a significant amount of “socially-based” sorting of pupils and schools with or without grammar schools. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/theselectiondebate.pdf">The most reliable evidence</a> also suggests that less academically able children do slightly better in schools with a more comprehensive intake than in the former secondary moderns. These modern comprehensives are schools that tend to have a mix of academic achievement and aptitude among pupils, compared with the previous secondary moderns – which was mainly where pupils who had failed the 11+ attended. </p>
<h2>4. What are the system-wide effects of a (partially) selective system?</h2>
<p><a href="https://orca.cf.ac.uk/73718/2/Sally%20Power%20and%20Geoff%20Whitty%20Final.pdf">The best available evidence</a> suggests that at a system level, the differences between a selective and a comprehensive school are small. And the average output – or “system productivity” – is much the same. In general, <a href="https://orca.cf.ac.uk/73718/2/Sally%20Power%20and%20Geoff%20Whitty%20Final.pdf">academically able children do better at grammar schools</a> and less able children do better in comprehensive schools – but these differences are really very small. </p>
<p>There are much larger differences between individual schools of the same type – even between different grammar schools – than between the average results of the different kinds of school. And it is also possible that some of these differences can be explained by the more favourable resourcing and teaching workforce associated with grammar schools.</p>
<p>So although for individual children the consequences of academic selection can be huge – in terms of the educational pathways that are open to them – overall there may actually be very little to choose between comprehensive or selective systems in terms of examination results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Power receives funding from HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council Wales) and the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Busting the myths on grammar schools.Sally Power, Director of Education, Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research Data and Method, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/741892017-03-08T10:28:32Z2017-03-08T10:28:32ZGrammar schools: why academic selection only benefits the very affluent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159947/original/image-20170308-24187-dsouv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the recent news that more than <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39183815">£500m has been set aside</a> by the UK government for new free schools – many of which could well become grammar schools – the selective schooling debate is firmly back on the table.</p>
<p>This £500m includes a one-off payment of £320m which will be allocated to help set up 140 new free schools. This comes on top of the already promised £216m which will help to rebuild and refurbish existing schools. The 140 new schools are in addition to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31791485">500 already pledged to be created by 2020</a>, and will pave the way for a new generation of grammar schools.</p>
<p>The cash boost comes as a <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/budget-2017-cash-boost-to-pave-way-for-new-grammar-schools-10793204">schools white paper</a> will be published over the next few weeks. It will include plans to reverse the ban on new grammars. The ban has been in place for nearly 20 years, but the UK prime minister Theresa May has said it is her “personal mission” to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/07/theresa-may-unveils-plans-new-generation-grammar-schools/">overturn the ban and create a grammar schools</a> revolution.</p>
<p>And yet despite May’s championing of grammars, a lot of <a href="http://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Grammar-schools-and-social-mobility_.pdf">recent</a> <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/poorgrammarreport-2.pdf">research</a> has demonstrated strong inequalities in access to selective schools.</p>
<h2>Highly skewed</h2>
<p>For the first time – through our new research – we can show the differences in the likelihood of attending a grammar school depending on your <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2012.01043.x/full">socioeconomic status</a> (SES). This is the most detailed measure of family circumstances available to date in administrative data. </p>
<p>Our analysis confirms that access to grammar schools is highly skewed by a child’s socioeconomic status – with the most deprived families living in grammar school areas standing only a 6% chance of attending a selective school.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159948/original/image-20170308-24226-9sc28d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grammar schools: just for the wealthy?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For our analysis, we adopted this <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2012.01043.x/full">SES index</a> which uses individual free school meal eligibility, and enriches it with very local neighbourhood measures based on the pupil’s postcode. </p>
<p>The measures include the type of neighbourhood, levels of deprivation, and the occupational structure, along with levels of education and home ownership figures. All this information is then combined to produce an index of socioeconomic status for each pupil in our data.</p>
<p>This allows for a considerably broader measure than simply using eligibility for free school meals, which most <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS-FACT-SHEET-AUGUST-2016.pdf">other analyses</a> have used. </p>
<h2>Just for the wealthy</h2>
<p>In our analysis, we compared how pupils from different social backgrounds fare when it comes to grammar selection. This includes the “just about managing”, as well as the middle classes, and the most affluent. </p>
<p>Our analysis shows clearly that it is mostly the very affluent that make it into grammar schools – and that there is a dramatic difference in access to selective schools depending on the pupil’s background. </p>
<p>The average chance of getting in in selective areas is below 50% for almost all families. But when you break this figure down and analyse it based on the pupil’s SES – or their background – the data reveals a more complex story.</p>
<p>We show that only the most affluent families – the top 10% by SES – have a 50% or better chance of attending a grammar. While those pupils at the very top – the 1% most affluent – have an 80% chance of attending a grammar. </p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-cBw1g" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/cBw1g/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Looking at the graph, if we approximate the “just about managing” families – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38049245">otherwise known as the Jams</a> – as those in the range from the 20th to the 40th percentile of SES, they have only a 12% chance of attending a grammar school. These families have <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">featured prominently in Theresa May’s rhetoric</a> since she became prime minister, and yet so few make it into grammar schools. </p>
<p>As the graph shows, families in the middle of the SES distribution also generally do not get into grammars. Of typical families, in the middle of the SES distribution, our analysis shows that only 23% attend a selective school. </p>
<h2>Differences in access</h2>
<p>Given the strong link between SES and achievement – even at age 11 – it may be the case that these SES gradients are simply reflecting higher achievement among pupils from more affluent families. </p>
<p>But our analysis also shows that the chances of accessing a grammar school vary hugely by family background, even when we compare children who have the same attainment at age 11. </p>
<p>Let’s look at two children – one from the poorest SES quintile and one from the least deprived SES quintile – both performing at the 80th percentile of the Key Stage 2 distribution. Despite the same level of academic attainment, our analysis shows that the most deprived pupil has only a 25% chance of attending a grammar compared to a 70% chance for the least deprived pupil. </p>
<p>This a 45 percentage point gap for children with the same achievement at age 11 – which clearly can be seen in the graph below.</p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-BnnO8" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/BnnO8/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>What this means in real terms is that children from the most affluent families performing in as low as the 35th percentile of the Key Stage 2 distribution have a positive chance of accessing a grammar school in selective areas. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, those children from the most deprived families need to be achieving in at least the 50th percentile before there is any chance of them attending a grammar school. </p>
<p>This shows how grammars remain the preserve of the affluent. Because even children from disadvantaged backgrounds who perform very well at primary school have less chance of getting into these schools than affluent children who perform moderately well. </p>
<p>Of course, the argument will be that the “new grammars” will be different and (somehow) give greater access to children from more deprived backgrounds. </p>
<p>Yet there are no details of the mechanisms that could be put in place to prevent them having the same access issues as the existing schools. And as the evidence here suggests, affluent parents seem to be very good at getting their kids in to grammars, irrespective of their primary school performance. </p>
<p><em>This analysis will be published as a new working paper “Assessing the role of grammar schools in promoting social mobility” in the Department of Social Science working paper series at <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe">UCL Institute of Education</a> in the coming weeks.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Burgess receives funding from ESRC and DfE. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Crawford and Lindsey Macmillan do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New analysis shows access to grammar schools is highly skewed by a child’s socioeconomic status.Simon Burgess, Professor of Economics, University of BristolClaire Crawford, Assistant Professor, Economics Department, University of WarwickLindsey Macmillan, Senior Lecturer in Economics, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668642016-10-12T13:21:38Z2016-10-12T13:21:38ZGrammar schools do nothing for social mobility – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141238/original/image-20161011-12027-1oa39rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More needs to be done to support pupils from poorer backgrounds</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monkey Business Images/Shuttertock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This September, my youngest daughter sat her 11 plus exam – and in a couple of days’ time, along with many children (and parents) up and down the country, we will find out her results.</p>
<p>I live in Tunbridge Wells, an affluent town in the south of England, but as a former social worker who spent many years working with teenagers in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36405125">West Kent</a>, I also know it is a town of inequality – where the needs of those living with real difficulties are suppressed and minimised. </p>
<p>I have seen first hand how the selective system disenfranchises disadvantaged young people. And it was with reluctance that my husband and I entered our daughter for the test, feeling the complex dilemma of not liking the system we live in, but also knowing that it is difficult to restrict potential opportunities for our children based on our own political views. </p>
<p>So while Theresa May looks longingly back at the opportunities for social mobility provided to her by grammar school education, I wonder if she has caught up with <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-theresa-may-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-grammar-schools-65360">how it really works today</a>. Because the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36405125">statistics</a> speak for themselves – less than 3% of grammar school entrants are entitled to free school meals, compared to a national average of 18%. And 13% of grammar school entrants actually come from outside the state sector – primarily from independent fee-paying schools. </p>
<p>As a consequence of this lack of diversity, the grammar schools in this area have developed a strong and exclusive middle-class culture. My older daughter attends the local girl’s grammar school and as a parent I find the culture intimidatingly middle-class. And if I feel this, despite the fact that I work as a university lecturer, I wonder how others might feel. </p>
<h2>Tutor-proof?</h2>
<p>Along with the middle-class culture within the grammar schools, there is also the rise in specific <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/03/14/how-do-i-choose-the-right-11-plus-tutor/">11 plus tutoring</a>. I have heard of nearby primary schools in Tunbridge Wells where every pupil in the year five class is being tutored – almost like a rite of passage, even for the brightest children. </p>
<p>Kent County Council claims it is trying to address this. And two years ago it introduced a new system stating that primary schools were not allowed to offer any assistance to children in preparing for the 11 plus. They developed a new test which they marketed as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/12/tutor-11plus-test-grammar-schools-disadvantaged-pupils">tutor-proof</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141242/original/image-20161011-12013-1meczmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Theresa May reckons the only reason she’s Prime Minister is because she went to grammar school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This new test is less predictable in its content, and included English for the first time. But claiming the test was tutor proof was like waving a red rag to the middle-class parenting bull. The sense of uncertainty about the questions has led to even more anxiety in parents, and subsequently even <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/kent-private-schools-ignore-11-plus-tutoring-ban/">more tutoring among the children</a>. So while primary schools are not allowed to show pupils sample papers, or prepare children in any way, this seems to have perpetuated inequality further. </p>
<p>The first time I looked at some of the nonverbal reasoning papers I was utterly confused. Once you practice them a few times they become easier as you get used to the type of thinking that is required. So having parents who have the money and inclination to buy you some practice tests is likely to make a significant difference to performance. Maths topics, such as algebra, are included in the test, despite this not being on the year five curriculum – making it hard to see how Kent can argue this is a “tutor-proof” test. </p>
<h2>Inflated achievements</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/09/08/the-school-system-is-already-loaded-in-favour-of-middle-class-fa/">Furthering the inequality</a> is the fact that the test now occurs on the first week back in school after the summer holidays, when most children will have only been back in school for two or three days. This timing is particularly detrimental to social mobility – as <a href="http://www.ippr.org/publications/thursdays-child">research</a> from The Institute for Public Policies shows how children from disadvantaged backgrounds regress in English and maths during the summer holidays.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141243/original/image-20161011-12017-1t3xzdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not everyone can afford expensive tutoring clubs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slobodan Zivkovic/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the estate where I live, local people have taken action. It’s a local authority estate and a tiny proportion of children on the estate currently attend the town’s grammar school. With funding from the local housing association a tutoring club was set up to assist local children with the test. </p>
<p>It’s an excellent initiative and hopefully will make a difference, yet the real problem is a systemic one. It’s a problem of poverty – of children starting life from very different positions – and of inequality in primary schools, where the extensive tutoring in the more affluent schools inflates achievements.</p>
<h2>Test of time</h2>
<p>My parents grew up with the grammar school system in Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales. In the 1950s, in a town with considerable poverty, the grammar school system seemed to provide genuine opportunities for social mobility. Yet I always remember my mother telling me about how her friends were split by the 11 plus exam. While my mother went to the grammar school, her best friend failed the test, and struggled to get over this disappointment. The secondary modern options were particularly poor in that era, and I remember my mother reporting the sadness of that split in her friends – children felt defined by, and ashamed of their “failure”.</p>
<p>As a teenager in the 1980s comprehensive system, I listened to this seemingly antiquated story never imagining that my own children would face the same situation. That we are still putting our children through this – in a country where our children’s well-being and mental health is increasingly fragile – seems like a step backwards rather than forwards.</p>
<p>Instead of testing pupils, we need to be building children’s confidence and offering opportunities to those who need them most. And if we really want to promote the success of this generation of children then going back in time is unlikely to be the answer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhian Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Theresa May might believe ‘poorer children do better’ at grammar schools, but she still has a lot to learn about how social inequality impacts education.Rhian Taylor, Lecturer in social work, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/652602016-10-06T11:41:43Z2016-10-06T11:41:43ZThe truth about meritocracy: it doesn’t make society fairer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140508/original/image-20161005-14221-hw7hsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">racorn/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the core of Theresa May’s reasons for lifting the ban on new grammar schools in September was, the prime minister <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">argued</a>, her desire for “Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy”. Reiterating this again at the Conservative Party conference a month later, she said <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/05/theresa-mays-conference-speech-in-full/">that she wants</a> to “build a country that truly works for everyone, not just the privileged few.</p>
<p>By mining a recurrent theme of British politicians with her focus on meritocracy, May argues that by rewarding those who excel and work hard, her government will build a fair society in a country left fractured after the Brexit vote. But she should beware: educational meritocracy is a facade that holds little promise of creating an equitable or egalitarian society.</p>
<h2>Meritocratic dystopia</h2>
<p>It was Michael Young – father of the journalist and free school founder Toby Young – who first coined the term "meritocracy” in his 1958 book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy_1870_2033.html?id=InXWAAAAMAAJ">The Rise of the Meritocracy</a>. It was also Young, ironically, who provided its first full-blown critique. His book is now best known as a satire on a future society where merit is defined as “IQ plus effort” and social stratification determined by IQ testing. Young’s book is clearly no manifesto for meritocracy and it holds out little prospect that meritocratic forms of selection will necessarily be equitable, let alone egalitarian. But there is also a more positive message in the book about improving equality of opportunity as a means to make meritocracy more acceptable.</p>
<p>In practice, Young’s ideas on equality of opportunity were primarily focused on educational opportunities. As an egalitarian, he deplored Britain’s divisive system of secondary schools to which children were selected through the 11+ exam, based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/genetics-what-it-is-that-makes-you-clever-and-why-its-shrouded-in-controversy-56115">narrow measurements of IQ</a>. He therefore supported the development of non-selective comprehensive secondary schools to replace the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. He also supported wider social access to higher education through his promotion of an Open University which was <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2014.981160?journalCode=fcbh20">finally inaugurated</a> by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1964.</p>
<p>So Young broadly supported rewards based on merit, but only when underpinned by greater equality in opportunities. What he did not support was a narrow form of meritocracy where merit was judged according to the results of unreliable forms of IQ testing leading to highly unequal forms of education. He <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment">was disappointed</a> to find the term meritocracy, which he had coined, being widely taken up as an ideal by the Tony Blair government without awareness of the problems which had been shown to attend it.</p>
<h2>Politically attractive</h2>
<p>The political attractions of meritocracy are evident and it has been <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00165.x/abstract">widely accepted</a> as an important element in the ideology of various centre-left parties in Europe. Meritocracy <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Europe_Undivided.html?id=nO1zekJukHwC">was identified</a> by the European Union as a key characteristic of educational and social policy to look out for within former Soviet-block countries aiming to enter the European project. </p>
<p>In China, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-reforms-to-chinas-college-entrance-exam-are-so-revolutionary-36048">Gaokao, a highly selective entrance examination</a> for the higher education system, was re-introduced in 1977 after the country’s chaotic ten-year Cultural Revolution. As my <a href="http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9789811015861#aboutBook">new research has shown</a>, by promoting the Gaokao as a mechanism for meritocratic selection, the Chinese Communist Party was seen as taking a groundbreaking step away from social selection based on political affiliation. But while the Gaokao selection test purported to represent meritocratic selection, in fact it legitimised the privileges of those new elites who seized new political and economic power as China went through a period of market reform.</p>
<p>The Gaokao has meant that lower social groups, such as the working class and peasants who lost their previous social security and welfare, believe that if young people fail the exams or only achieve access to non-prestigious institutions, they are of inferior intelligence. It has stopped them challenging the unfairness of a system that means the children of urban professionals and political elites are more likely to have access to better higher education opportunities. At the same time, it has minimised the importance of the state spending money on policies that would reduce social inequality among different regions and between the rural and the urban.</p>
<h2>A fairer society?</h2>
<p>May is now using the promise of a new educational meritocracy as part of her appeal to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36788782">the “just managing”</a> – at time when persistent social inequality and Brexit have led to division. But it’s not clear <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">if and how a new set of grammar schools</a> will provide more opportunities for upward social mobility for working-class children. </p>
<p>Yet, we can draw from Young’s predictions about what a mature meritocracy would look like. Social status would be determined exclusively by a narrowly defined system of merit, and social inequality for those left behind is a necessary byproduct of rewarding those who excel. This allows no alibis for failure and is likely to be a harsher and more unforgiving type of class society than what preceded it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ye Liu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Inequality for those left behind is a necessary byproduct of rewarding those who excel.Ye Liu, Lecturer in International Development, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/653782016-09-21T11:39:51Z2016-09-21T11:39:51ZGrammar Schools: how they’ll make education policy even more complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138309/original/image-20160919-11090-169h8of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Primary school children work on problem solving.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">legenda/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Theresa May’s plans to bring back grammar schools has provoked a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00435.x">storm of controversy</a> – with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-theresa-may-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-grammar-schools-65360">downside of grammars</a> now well documented. But on top of these well known negatives, there are other significant grammar school effects that have been relatively overlooked.</p>
<p>One is the impact on previous education policy – and the push for academies. Since 2010, a radical programme to curb the power of local authorities and ensure the system is led by schools has been implemented. This is known as a “school-led-system”, and it aims to spread the practices of outstandingly successful practitioners to less successful schools. It has been vigorously re-endorsed in a recent <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508550/Educational_excellence_everywhere__print_ready_.pdf">white paper</a>.</p>
<p>There are two main ways this will be achieved. The first is for all schools to become academies, releasing them from local authority control. These schools will then work in groups of 15 to 30 schools, constituted as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/forcing-all-schools-to-turn-into-academies-is-not-educations-biggest-problem-58462">multi-academy trusts</a>”. Multi-academy trusts have a single governing body and are run by a headteacher with an outstanding track record.</p>
<p>The second is to increase the number of Teaching Schools. These are schools with an outstanding Ofsted grade which are tasked with delivering high quality professional development in an area. They invite schools to join their Teaching School Alliance to benefit from their school improvement activities.</p>
<h2>Local relations</h2>
<p>But this is no easy task, in part because local school <a href="http://ema.sagepub.com/content/42/3/321.short">relations have always been complex</a> – with a level of latent distrust that makes them difficult to navigate for everyone, especially headteachers. Plus, schools have to compete against each other to attract easier to educate pupils and to recruit the best staff. </p>
<p>On a lot of these issues, the local authority used to act as referee. But the marginalisation of the Local Authority has removed the old way of managing schooling in a local area. And strategic decision making in a school led system now requires substantial collaboration between schools. </p>
<p>There are now several multi-academy trusts and teaching schools in each area – and the trusts are competing for pupils and staff, while teaching schools are competing for schools to join their alliance. This means that they are required to be both competitors and collaborators at the same time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138600/original/image-20160921-21715-1vfa91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schools have to compete against each other to attract the best students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite these difficulties – often as a result of brokering by the weakened Local Authorities – schools have over the last few years fostered enough mutual trust to build new and fragile <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/325816/DFE-RR359.pdf">collaborative structures</a> and relationships. These promise to make strategic decision making possible and provide effective peer to peer school improvement procedures.</p>
<p>But, if implemented, the new selective policy will intensify levels of distrust. Secondary schools will watch each other to see who might break first and the emerging local settlements designed for the good of all children and necessary for the achievement of a “school led system” are likely to be seriously disrupted.</p>
<h2>Primary impact</h2>
<p>Another major effect of the reintroduction of selection would be the impact on primary schools. When the selective test at 11 was first introduced, the actual <a href="http://shura.shu.ac.uk/8785/">age of selection</a> was effectively pushed to a younger age – as children thought capable of passing were separated into a grammar stream and intensively coached. </p>
<p>This inhibited progressive developments in primary education inspired by educational thinkers and practitioners who emphasised the importance and distinctness of education in the early years. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138601/original/image-20160921-21707-cd03wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tested to destruction?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ermolaev Alexander/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These days, testing is again a big part of primary schooling, with critics pointing out how high stakes testing (SATs) and accompanying league tables have caused primary schools to narrow the curriculum, to stream and <a href="http://cprtrust.org.uk/">teach to the test</a>. And the introduction of selection at 11 will do nothing to reduce this effect. If anything, it is more likely to strengthen it.</p>
<h2>Contradictory policies</h2>
<p>The recent <a href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf">green paper</a> suggests that the proposed selection system is compatible with the present policies for a school led system, but the latter requires a level of mutual trust that the former is likely to undermine. </p>
<p>The implementation of a selective system means that once again those on the ground in local areas will have to make sense of contradictory national policies emerging from what is beginning to look like a permanent revolution in education.</p>
<p>There will be heroic examples where this is made to work and they will be rightly celebrated. But for the majority, while they have been working hard to make things work in the interests of all the children in their area, this policy – if implemented – will make that task much more difficult.</p>
<p>And while the prime minister and her education secretary do not deny the evidence of these and other negative effects of grammar schools, they also assert that they can be avoided – quite how, though, remains yet to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Coldron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The reintroduction of grammar schools means that once again schools and headteachers will be required to make sense of contradictory national policies.John Coldron, Professor of Education, Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/653892016-09-19T14:01:58Z2016-09-19T14:01:58ZGrammar schools: a very English solution to a very English problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137771/original/image-20160914-4980-thf9dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">legenda/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The government’s decision to pass new legislation for the reintroduction of grammar schools took most people by surprise and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-theresa-may-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-grammar-schools-65360">was met with outcry</a> by quite a few working in education. Details about how these new grammar schools would work in practice are still vague – in particular how they would avoid the traditional bias towards the middle classes. However what seems to stand out strongly in the debate is the generally negative response to this policy by the experts and even those in the Conservative Party. </p>
<p>Despite this, Theresa May seems determined to push ahead with her plans, quite possibly because grammar schools are simply <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/09/09/new-map-shows-where-new-grammar-schools-would-be-m/">popular with the public</a>. The cynic might well argue that the new prime minister wants to endear herself to the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/22/election-2015-who-voted-for-whom-labour-conservatives-turnout">electorate</a> – and what could be more convenient than to bring back a policy which resonates strongly with aspiring middle class and working class parents.</p>
<p>This renewed focus on grammar schools could also be seen as part of her post Brexit approach to policy. This means finding English solutions to English problems – and what could be more “English” than a grammar school with its respect for tradition, academic rigour, discipline and access through merit?</p>
<p>This point should not be underestimated given that the government is now on a mission to show Europe and the rest of the world that it can plough its own furrow and does not need to be told by “foreigners” how to run its affairs, be it the economy, immigration or education. </p>
<p>And of course, as a former grammar school girl herself, May is part of that tradition. She is one of many politicians who have benefited from a grammar school education and who look back with nostalgia on their school days.</p>
<p>The Labour leader and prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s, Harold Wilson, who was also an old grammar school boy, is alleged to have stated in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CDJaCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=D+Reisman+Crosland's+Future:+Opportunity+and+Outcome&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin4p-79pDPAhXKAcAKHcHZBWUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=D%20Reisman%20Crosland's%20Future%3A%20Opportunity%20and%20Outcome&f=false">1963</a> that grammar schools would be abolished “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Harold_Wilson.html?id=02FnAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">over my dead body</a>” – although the abolition of grammar schools was in fact included as Labour party policy in its 1964 election manifesto. But this demonstrates how there is clearly an abiding respect for the systems and institutions from which some politicians have benefited.</p>
<h2>Testing times</h2>
<p>Of course, the negatives of grammar schools are well documented, and the issue of testing often comes top of the list for many against this type of selective schooling. In England, testing has become a way of life in schools to the point where children are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/our-children-tested-to-destruction-779790.html">some of the most tested in the world</a>. Teaching to the test has become the norm, and the 11 plus – the entrance exam to grammar schools – is no exception. Though of course, it goes without saying that some groups are <a href="https://theconversation.com/english-grammar-schools-try-to-shake-off-middle-class-bias-23806">better equipped to prepare for such tests</a> than others.</p>
<p>Ability testing such as the 11 plus is assumed to be inherently sound and based on strong scientific evidence. But in reality these types of tests are much less reliable than their creators claim. They are the result of often <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20298643?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">flawed ideas and contested scientific assumptions</a> – and the 11 plus exam is effectively only a test of spatial, linguistic and mathematical skills in children under very restricted and stressful conditions. </p>
<p>It is also based on a very crude set of assumptions, namely that a child’s abilities are overwhelmingly genetically inherited from his or her parents. This type of testing assumes 80% of a child’s intelligence is fixed at birth and can be accurately measured at age 11 – with only 20% believed to be the result of environmental factors. So we are effectively seen as <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17707530-the-psychopath-inside">prisoners of our genes</a> – which we know can be far from the case. </p>
<p>What it underestimates is the possibility that some children might be late developers, as well as the significant <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=388216">influence of socioeconomic background</a> on a child’s development. It also implies that there is little incentive for anyone labelled as having ‘lower’ or ‘average’ intelligence’ to have high aspirations. Evidence of the <a href="http://www.pearsoned.co.uk/highereducation/resources/woolfolkpsychologyineducation2e/">effects of such labelling</a> is well documented and can only serve to increase the feelings of division in the education system. </p>
<p>Such tests are said to be objective and value free measures of ability, uncontaminated by culture or class. And it is also claimed that a child’s ability can be indicated in the form of a single number. </p>
<p>Every one of these assumptions about intelligence tests have <a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/sociology-of-education/book241030">been effectively challenged</a>, and yet such tests are still relied upon by grammar schools today – much as they were 50 years ago - to define children as either academically or vocationally inclined. The current 11 plus test completely ignores the <a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-special-education/book237524">alternative and often complementary views of intelligence</a>, and is therefore incapable of measuring such things as multiple intelligences, cognitive styles, creativity and the ability to work cooperatively with others. </p>
<h2>Academic vs vocational</h2>
<p>It is also a strange time for the government to promote the ethos of the grammar school – with its narrow focus on academic ability – given that British employers are constantly pointing to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/525449/UKC004_Summary_Report__May_.pdf">lack of vocational and practical skills</a> in school leavers. Perhaps this again demonstrates the priority given by many politicians to academic over practical and vocational skills. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137778/original/image-20160914-4989-1uau7jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grammar schools do little to help develop vocational skills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phovoir/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is clear then that rather than embarking on a policy based on a nostalgia for grammar schools, May should be concerned with the needs of all pupils. </p>
<p>This would require not just a complete rethinking of the government’s schools funding policy. It would also require a serious attempt to tackle <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-child-poverty-soaring-due-to-government-s-austerity-measures-unicef-says-9823049.html">child poverty</a> because schools alone can’t alter the low levels of social mobility in Britain. And it is likely that more grammar schools will help to widen the class divide in education rather than reduce it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Boronski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The cynic might argue Theresa May wants to endear herself to the electorate, and what could be more convenient than to bring back a policy which resonates strongly with aspiring middle class parents.Tom Boronski, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/652522016-09-15T10:44:37Z2016-09-15T10:44:37ZDoes selective schooling work anywhere in the world?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137563/original/image-20160913-4958-sivofq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hands up for better education policy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">michaeljung/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After Prime Minister Theresa May announced that more schools in England would be allowed to start selecting pupils based on their ability, the government has <a href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf">launched a consultation</a> on its plans to make “schools work for everyone”. </p>
<p>But the national evidence, based on comparing the 163 existing grammar schools with all other state-funded schools in England, is clear. Grammar schools <a href="http://eer.sagepub.com/content/14/3-4/257.abstract">take in</a> very few disadvantaged or low-income pupils, and are associated with local segregation between families of different social and economic types, of a kind that reduces aspiration and damages futures. In order to get in, pupils have to be older within their year group (which is no indicator of talent or merit), and the few pupils who are eligible for free school meals in grammar schools <a href="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=ES%2FN012046%2F1">have been eligible</a> for fewer of their school years than average. </p>
<p>The higher examination outcomes for pupils attending grammar schools are explained by looking at who these pupils are – their prior attainment, family poverty, age-in-year and so on – and not by the kind of school they went to. It is not clear why these schools have survived as a remnant in the comprehensive era since 1966, nor why anyone aware of the evidence, both at home and abroad, would wish to expand them. </p>
<h2>Selection in Anglophone countries</h2>
<p>One of the biggest problems with comparing education policy in one country with that of another is that the economic, political and other contextual factors differ. A developing country may have selective schools and fund education poorly, leading to worse test outcomes than a richer country that does not have selection. This would be no test of the impact of selection.</p>
<p>None of the world’s major English-speaking countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a national system of selecting children for entry to state-funded schools at around age 11, even though they may – like England – have specific school types <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lesson-from-canada-why-australia-should-have-fewer-selective-schools-35534">that are selective</a>. To slightly differing extents, they have <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/9810131ec035.pdf?expires=1473761934&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=70597FB2A18EBB05BF24C56E17A413A7">what the OECD terms</a> “low levels of horizontal differentiation at the system level”, meaning that their school systems are more comprehensive than selective. </p>
<p>These countries are, in many respects, the most similar to the UK. Many of the remaining countries with strong historical links to the UK are at different stages of development, such as Pakistan, which like several developing countries, does not yet have universal secondary schooling.</p>
<h2>Selection in the Pacific Rim</h2>
<p>The picture is less clear for non-European countries which are regularly deemed to perform well in international comparisons such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s <a href="https://www.oecd.org/pisa/">Programme for International Student Assessment</a> (PISA) tests. China is represented only by a few coastal urban areas. Japan and South Korea do not operate a national policy of selection – Japan has traditionally allocated places by the proximity of a child’s home to the school but is increasingly offering parents a “choice” of school. </p>
<p>Singapore on the other hand is more selective, and many of its most popular schools do use selection based on prior performance to handle over-subscription. Overall, however, there is no evidence from PISA or elsewhere that nationally selective systems and better test outcomes are positively linked. </p>
<h2>In the EU, selection does not produce equity</h2>
<p>Probably the clearest comparisons with the most evidence come from the European Union’s 28 countries. Even here, the level of development varies between countries. The <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data-explorer">UN Human Development Index</a> is 92 for the Netherlands, but 78 for Bulgaria. In general, the countries that have low educational equity (<a href="https://www.oecd.org/edu/Education-at-a-Glance-2014.pdf">assessed by</a> a high correlation between social background and educational outcomes) are also less developed. Those with the highest Human Development Index, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and England, tend to have high equity, better test outcomes, and are not nationally selective in their schooling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137911/original/image-20160915-30611-hbxvay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Big moments for small children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catalin Petolea/www.shutterstock.co</span></span>
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<p>The European countries that have relatively low equity for their level of development and expenditure on education (such as Austria and Germany) are the most obvious examples of systems with early selection of pupils, known as tracking. Others, such as Belgium or Ireland, traditionally operate on a strong sectarian faith-basis, which is linked then to clustering by ethnicity and immigrant status as well as social class. Such countries portray a stronger than expected link between a pupil’s individual attainment and the background of their parents – presumably because selection is on the basis of prior attainment, which is strongly correlated with socio-economic status and family background. </p>
<p>Levels of trust and civic participation among adults in such lower equity countries are among the lowest in the EU. This can be shown by the <a href="http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/view/10.1057/9780230277335">link between experiences</a> at school, who a child goes to school with, and their wider outcomes such as preparation for citizenship. </p>
<p>It is quite hard to find a suitable comparison from around the world that the government in England could “borrow” its new selective education policy from in the 21st century. Most developed countries do not operate a formal, national selective system and the most successful countries (rather than cities) in PISA do not operate a formal selective system. </p>
<p>So the best evidence for England is still the evidence from England, both from when the grammar school system <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Origins_and_destinations.html?id=p00PAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">was widespread</a> and more recently. Both show that the gains are minimal if any, while the dangers for social cohesion are daunting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gorard receives funding from the ESRC (grant number ES/N012046/1) to investigate the different kinds of poverty and their impact on education. </span></em></p>Grammar schools are back on the agenda in England, but they are not a go-to education policy for the 21st century.Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/653602016-09-13T11:45:02Z2016-09-13T11:45:02ZDear Theresa May, this is what you need to know about grammar schools<p>Here we go again, <a href="https://theconversation.com/grammar-school-plan-might-not-be-worth-the-risk-for-theresa-may-63667">grammar schools</a> are back on the agenda. They have been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-for-an-honest-debate-about-grammar-schools-62370">persistent undercurrent</a> in English educational debate. And it is peculiarly English – in no other country does the argument for selective education so regularly rear its head. What is even more bizarre is that in England, the argument for grammar schools is couched not really in educational terms at all, but in political and social terms. </p>
<p>Grammar schools, some ministers tell us, give more parents more “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37338601">choice</a>”. The reality is they do not. Because in selective systems, schools choose pupils – meaning there is in actual fact less choice. And while their defenders insist grammar schools drive social mobility – they simply do not. Across England’s 164 surviving grammar schools, just <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS-FACT-SHEET.pdf">3% of pupils</a> qualify for free school meals, against a national figure of 16%. </p>
<p>But of course the poor and disadvantaged were always significantly underrepresented at grammar schools – documented as early as 1963 by Brian Jackson and Denis Marsden in their classic study <a href="http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9781136470141_sample_510206.pdf">Education and the Working Class</a>. </p>
<h2>Changing times</h2>
<p>One of the big problems with grammar schools is they are relics of a vanished past, not just the vanished past of gowns and certain school uniforms, but the vanished past of a disappeared economy. </p>
<p>When modern grammar schools first came into existence, England was a very different place to live. This was a time when the vast majority of young men would move from an early school leaving date to an assured job in a mine or a factory, and the majority of young women would work as housewives and mothers. Only a tiny majority of men and women would be educated to lead and manage in the working world – and at the peak of the grammar school system in the later 1950s, <a href="https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/111028112306-BetrayedGenerations.pdf">just 9% of 16-year-olds</a> got any qualifications at all. </p>
<p>This is a world which has comprehensively disappeared. There is no future for any economy in which only a minority of pupils are educated to high levels. Where once you could leave school with no qualifications and expect to find a reasonably well-paid job, now the labour market and society demand ever higher levels of qualification.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/12/justine-greening-faces-tory-dissent-over-grammar-school-plans">defenders</a> of the government’s apparent new policy line insist that it will be different now: that mistakes have been learnt. They insist that the problem was not grammar schools but secondary moderns, which were under-resourced and offered unchallenging curricula – until the early 1960s, secondary moderns were not allowed to even enter pupils for public examinations. But we should always worry about policy makers who tell us “it’s different now”, because it rarely ever is. </p>
<h2>Selective schooling</h2>
<p>Any academic selection at the beginning of secondary education inevitably involves selecting out as well as selecting in. And <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/SuttonTrustFullReportFinal11.pdf">evidence</a> shows the impact of failing to secure a place at a grammar school can have on children. It turns them off education, it destroys self confidence, it lowers expectations and it produces failure.</p>
<p>Plus, selection itself fails every test – it is simply unreliable and ineffective. No test at age 11 will reliably discriminate between those who are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/whats-it-like-to-take-the-11-plus-to-be-written-off-as-a-failure-is-a-travesty">academically able and those who are not</a>. And all tests have a high error rate, either because they are unable to accurately measure what they assess, or because of random variations in performance on the day of the test – or even because of marker error. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137569/original/image-20160913-4948-ep5917.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Grammar schools don’t do anything for social mobility.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>There is also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/10/the-blurred-line-between-success-and-failure-under-the-11-plus">little serious evidence</a> that test performance at age 11 is strongly predictive of performance at ages 12, 13, 14, 15 and beyond. The belief in fixed ability which drove selection for grammar schools was simply wrong. Youngsters develop at different speeds and in different ways. And it has proved impossible to design a test which does not reward those better off – and certainly those who are able to afford tutors. </p>
<p>And even if the new grammar schools are instructed to reserve places for some definition of the “worse-off”, it is likely that it will reward those parents with good accountants – much as the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9609629/Bursaries-how-to-get-a-reduction-on-school-fees.html">assisted places scheme</a> did at independent schools.</p>
<h2>High expectations</h2>
<p>All children thrive on a high-demand, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0KkbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT16&lpg=PT16&dq=high+demand+high+expectation+curriculum&source=bl&ots=0PKxeV0-Iv&sig=Dc92dCeletg_JQlk9BY3dOWfExU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqi5fBk4zPAhUCFCwKHRlIDQ0Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=high%20demand%20high%20expectation%20curriculum&f=false">high-expectation curriculum</a> in a school setting which allows for differential rates of learning and development. So if those who advocate grammar schools do really believe in a high expectation curriculum for all then there is simply no case whatsoever for grammar schools.</p>
<p>So you see, we simply don’t need grammar schools anymore. Instead, we need something very different – schools which set high expectations for all. Schools that are able to develop young people across multiple routes, moving not just a minority, but the majority through to high levels of achievement.</p>
<p>Schools do not exist in a vacuum. We live in a society, in a world facing multiple challenges. We have to prepare all our young people for those challenges, by giving them the skills and knowledge they need for the technologically sophisticated and intellectually demanding work and society of the future. And we need all our schools and all our young people to thrive, not just the select few.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Husbands does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We need all schools and young people to thrive, not just the select few.Chris Husbands, Vice Chancellor, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/653572016-09-13T11:16:10Z2016-09-13T11:16:10ZWhat the David Cameron resignation tells us about Theresa May’s plans<p>On a day when the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2016/sep/12/tuc-leader-says-labour-must-start-focusing-on-what-voters-want-politics-live?page=with:block-57d69113e4b013613fffc6f7#block-57d69113e4b013613fffc6f7">latest poll</a> gave the Conservative Party 41% and a 13 percentage point lead, over the Labour Party, the man who was once the future chose to consign himself to the political and parliamentary past.</p>
<p>Announcing his resignation from parliament, David Cameron <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-resigns-resignation-statement-in-full-mp-witney-former-prime-minister-a7238671.html">claimed</a> that “with modern politics, with the circumstances of my resignation, it isn’t really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister”.</p>
<p>Previously, Cameron had spoken of the “enormous privilege” of serving his constituents. He indicated his intention not only to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/10/david-cameron-intends-stand-re-election-mp-in-2020">continue as an MP</a>, but to seek re-election in 2020.</p>
<p>However, the operative words in Cameron’s statement were “the circumstances of my resignation”. Those circumstances were his humiliating defeat in the EU referendum. </p>
<p>Cameron’s presence on the backbenches at Westminster would have served as a constant reminder to his party, political opponents and, above all, himself of his responsibility for the political and economic turmoil unleashed by Brexit. He had to go.</p>
<p>Cameron <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-resigns-resignation-statement-in-full-mp-witney-former-prime-minister-a7238671.html">claimed</a> he would have become “a big distraction and a big diversion” from the work of the current government had he remained in parliament. However, the timing of his resignation statement could not have been more distracting or diversionary. His announcement coincided with (and overshadowed) education secretary Justine Greening’s own statement to parliament on the new government’s plan to bring back grammar schools.</p>
<p>Cameron never hid his opposition to new grammar schools in England. In 2007 he identified this issue as a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6679005.stm">key test</a> for the Conservatives. Did they want to be “an aspiring party of government” or “a right-wing debating society”? He argued that selective education was unpopular with parents because they didn’t want children “divided into successes and failures at 11”.</p>
<p>But the political and ideological distance between Cameron and May has already gone well beyond the issue of grammar schools. Indeed, one of the definitive characteristics of the May government during its early weeks in office has been the new prime minister’s determination to distance herself from the agenda of her predecessor at Number 10, and his closest political ally, George Osborne.</p>
<p>The former chancellor was the principal casualty of May’s immediate ministerial reshuffle but even before sacking him, she had already abandoned his target of reaching a fiscal surplus by 2020.</p>
<p>Add to that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/28/hinkley-point-c-to-go-ahead-after-edf-board-approves-project">the backtracking</a> over the Hinkley Point C power station and the plan to impose elected mayors on English regions, as well as the refashioning of the Northern Powerhouse agenda into an industrial strategy to drive nationwide productivity, and the dismantling of Osborne’s <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c04690ae-58dd-11e6-9f70-badea1b336d4.html#axzz4JyNfMACZ">political legacy</a> is complete. RIP the “long-term economic plan”.</p>
<h2>A new vision</h2>
<p>At the launch of her campaign to become Conservative Party leader, May <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html">spoke</a> of “a bold, new, positive vision … a vision of a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us”.</p>
<p>That theme of working for the many, and not the few has been the most frequent mantra of May’s speeches as prime minister. A politics founded on meritocracy and grammar schools is seeking to distance itself from the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17815769">Old Etonian sense of privilege</a> and entitlement associated with the “two arrogant posh boys”.</p>
<p>On the day she became leader, May <a href="http://press.conservatives.com/post/147947450370/we-can-make-britain-a-country-that-works-for">claimed</a> her vision for Britain constituted “a different kind of Conservatism” that “marks a break with the past”.</p>
<p>However, she may find it harder than she imagines to distance herself from her predecessor. Lest it be forgotten, May served as home secretary throughout the Cameron-Clegg coalition and the Cameron government. She may wish to engineer a break from the past, but she was an important part of it.</p>
<p>Previously, May had <a href="http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/07/full-text-of-theresa-mays-speech-we-will-win-by-being-the-party-for-all.html">argued</a> that, to become the “party for all”, the Conservative Party should occupy the common ground. In deciding where that ground is, she could follow Nigel Lawson’s <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cb84f70-6b7c-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f.html#axzz4JyNfMACZ">advice</a> to seize Brexit as the opportunity “to make the UK the most dynamic and freest country in the whole of Europe: in a word, to finish the job that Margaret Thatcher started”.</p>
<p>But recent <a href="http://opinium.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Dead-Centre-British-politics4_lr.pdf">research</a> once again points to the fact that 45% of people locate themselves firmly on the centre ground of politics. Only 30% identify with the right-of-centre ground occupied by Thatcherism. </p>
<p>With a parliamentary majority of only 12 seats, and with both cabinet ministers and rebellious backbenchers already showing signs of fractiousness and impatience over Brexit delays, the the temptation must be to opt for more radical Thatcherite domestic reforms that would please the parliamentary party. But limiting party dissent in the short term may come at the price of broader electoral appeal to centre ground floating voters in 2020.</p>
<p>Whether May now chooses to occupy that right-of-centre common ground, or steers her government towards the centre, will be one of the defining choices of her premiership.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The former PM appears to be distancing himself from the policies of the new government.Simon Lee, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/651992016-09-12T12:00:03Z2016-09-12T12:00:03ZTo move forwards on inequality we must not go back to grammar schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137350/original/image-20160912-3768-57gu2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grammar schools are not the answer. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SpeedKingz/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the political spectrum everybody agrees that children should have equal opportunities to “achieve their potential”. Unfortunately, <a href="https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/social-mobility-and-education">all the evidence shows</a> that you can’t have equality of opportunity without greater equality of outcome: if we want more social mobility we’re going to have to reduce social and economic equality first. </p>
<p>Income inequality is <a href="https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/social-mobility-and-education">strongly correlated</a> with low social mobility, with lower average educational performance and with bigger gaps in educational attainment between rich and poor children. Now, in a move to address the ban on grammar schools that the prime minister <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37311023">argues</a> has been “sacrificing children’s potential”, the government is proposing to reintroduce them. But grammar schools can’t fix this entrenched inequality between the rich and poor: all they do is perpetuate it for the vast majority of children.</p>
<h2>Disadvantage starts early</h2>
<p>Inequalities in educational attainment appear shockingly early in life. <a href="http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/page.aspx?&sitesectionid=853&sitesectiontitle=MCS2+%282004%2f5%29">Even before they reach preschool age</a>, disadvantaged children (by which I mean children from poor areas and with poor parents) lag behind the children of more affluent and educated parents. This isn’t because they are inherently less capable than other children. </p>
<p>The results of the global Programme for Student Assessment (PISA) tests run by the OECD show that in some countries, such as Canada, Finland, Japan and South Korea, <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/48852584.pdf">up 70% of poor 15-year-olds do better in school than predicted</a>. In the UK less than a quarter of poor children manage to exceed expectations based on their family background.</p>
<p>The OECD has also shown that <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/equity-and-quality-in-education_9789264130852-en">comprehensive schooling narrows differences</a> in educational achievement by social class. And in their rigorous examination of the evidence, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Truth-About-Our-Schools-Exposing-the-myths-exploring-the-evidence/Benn-Downs/p/book/9781138937178">The Truth About Our Schools</a>, authors Melissa Benn and Janet Downs exposed the failure of the grammar school system to boost social mobility and described the long-term damage caused to people who failed the 11+ entrance exam.</p>
<p>Also highly relevant is <a href="http://econpapers.repec.org/article/ucpjlabec/doi_3a10.1086_2f669340.htm">research from the University of Bristol</a>, which found that black children are systematically marked down by their classroom teachers, compared to the marks they are given in national tests marked remotely by teachers who do not know them. White British children from poor neighbourhoods were also marked down, compared to children from more affluent areas.</p>
<p>This “unconscious stereotyping” and discriminatory marking was most pronounced in areas with fewer black or poor children. This phenomenon, where children do better or worse depending on what their teachers expect of them is known as the “<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02322211">Pygmalion effect</a>” and has been known since the late 1960s. </p>
<p>Economic and cultural inequalities have deep-seated effects on all of us, and teachers are not immune. We need them to be trained to understand how social class and socioeconomic status affect their expectations of, and attitudes towards, their students.</p>
<h2>Structural inequality</h2>
<p>It is hopelessly unrealistic to expect our education system to fix the damage caused by poverty and inequality. Efforts to widen participation in higher education have <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf">benefited the middle class</a> more than poorer children. </p>
<p>Education researcher Diane Reay at the University of Cambridge <a href="https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/reay/bjes-zombie.pdf">has said</a> that working class children are too often seen as “inadequate learners with inadequate cultural backgrounds”. She found that many working-class children describe a sense of educational worthlessness and feeling that they are not valued or respected within their schools. They feel that teachers look down on them, make them look stupid, or think they’re dumb. </p>
<p>And it’s unrealistic to expect parents to provide educationally rich and nurturing environments for their kids when their own health and well-being are <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199389292.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199389292-e-44?mediaType=Article">undermined by poverty and inequality</a>. Long working hours and high levels of debt create situations of chronic stress and time poverty. </p>
<p>When parenting is compromised by the way we structure our society and economy then that is what we need to change, rather than proposing tweaks to the education system. Successful modern societies raise their educational performance, not by focusing on the “talented” few and thus wasting the potential and capabilities of the majority, but by creating the economic and educational environment in which all children can thrive. We can achieve so much more than we currently manage but grammar schools can only carry us backwards, not forwards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Pickett receives funding from the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, Big Lottery, the National Institute for Health Research and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. She is a trustee of The Equality Trust, a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health and a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>Reintroducing selective education will not solve deep economic and social inequalities.Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636792016-09-09T16:03:39Z2016-09-09T16:03:39ZWhy the ghost of grammar schools keeps on haunting us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135381/original/image-20160824-30222-b8xp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Lett/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So the cat is out of the bag, and months of rumour and speculation have borne fruit: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37311023">grammar schools are back on the agenda</a>. In her major <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">speech</a> on the subject, Theresa May went further than many had expected – and claimed that selection by ability might be adopted by any school in the state system. </p>
<p>Grammar schools – state secondary schools which select pupils by ability, traditionally using an entrance exam known as the 11+ – are the ghost which has never really been laid to rest in debates about contemporary British education. Institutions described as “grammar schools” have existed for centuries in the UK, but the version often remembered so fondly is the child of the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/">1944 Butler Education Act</a>.
These grammar schools, created by the Conservative Rab Butler in the wake of his 1944 Act were abolished in most parts of the country with the arrival of comprehensive education in the 1960s. New selective schools were then banned by law under the Labour government of 1998. But grammar schools never truly died and still remain in pockets around the UK such as Kent. So why the perennial cries for their resurrection?</p>
<p>It’s worth disinterring the history in order to answer that question. The 1944 Act introduced secondary education for all children in the UK, replacing the previous patchwork provision of state secondary education, but it generally did so along stratified lines. The 11+ exam, widely adopted by local education authorities, was intended to sort academic from non-academic pupils, and to spot those with an aptitude for technical education. </p>
<p>To serve this end, a tripartite school system was established in most of England and Wales – with grammar schools for academic children, secondary moderns for those who were not, and technical schools for those with a particular aptitude for technical pursuits. But as the social historian Michael Sanderson noted, technical schools were costly an in age of austerity <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aX9qCgAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=Michael+Sanderson+missing+stratum&source=bl&ots=aWZ7c8sArB&sig=sy1hdFAtsYtXGlxgy-Rl-8V7Z8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK8bjUh9rOAhUpCMAKHfPbAjIQ6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=Michael%20Sanderson%20missing%20stratum&f=false">and so were seldom built</a>. As a result, in most parts of the country it wasn’t a tripartite system at all, but a bipartite one – a youth divided between 11+ “successes” at grammars and “failures” at secondary moderns.</p>
<p>Historians argued that this became unsustainable due to public discontent. For instance, historian of psychology Adrian Wooldridge <a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511660351&cid=CBO9780511660351A005&tabName=Chapter">has shown</a> that the 11+ came under severe attack from sociologists who showed that it was a test which over-promised and under-delivered.</p>
<p>Its advocates, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/genetics-what-it-is-that-makes-you-clever-and-why-its-shrouded-in-controversy-56115">the psychologist Cyril Burt</a>, had argued it could differentiate between nature and nurture, that it could show which children had innate ability and those which didn’t. They believed the test and the grammar schools which deployed it could provide equality of opportunity to children of all classes – and so could be seen as vehicles of social mobility.</p>
<h2>Opposition mounts</h2>
<p>But as Wooldridge outlined, the evidence <a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511660351&cid=CBO9780511660351A023">didn’t back this up</a>. Instead, the 11+ was an engine of gross social injustice, fostering an education system sharply-divided on lines of social class. It was the case then, <a href="http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper164.pdf">as now</a>, that parental wealth and status were the key indicators in predicting a child’s life chances. </p>
<p>Places were not allocated across social classes in the proportions which were expected, a fact compounded by regional differences. More grammar school places in certain parts of the country meant that <a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511660351&cid=CBO9780511660351A023">in some places</a> children with considerably lower IQs went to grammar school while in other parts of the country those with higher scores went to secondary moderns. Even why 11 had been chosen as the cut-off point was open to question. Anthony Crosland, who was later to become Labour education secretary, wrote in the 1950s that the “<a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ioep/clre/2015/00000013/00000002/art00009?crawler=true">whole process has a distinctly arbitrary air</a>”.</p>
<p>As the historian of education Gary McCulloch has shown, the Labour Party <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0046760X.2015.1076067">gradually adopted comprehensive</a> secondary education as a policy in the 1950s and early 1960s. By the 1964 general election, and the advent of Harold Wilson’s Labour government, the battle-lines of the debate between tripartism and the comprehensive alternative were clearly drawn. Labour knew that the prestige of the grammar school was real: <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0046760X.2015.1076067">comprehensives were advertised</a> as “grammar schools for all”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135378/original/image-20160824-30209-1ye3cy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A local comp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/disley/4239899529/sizes/o/">aldisley/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was Crosland, education secretary from January 1965, who issued the now famous <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/des/circular10-65.html">Circular 10/65 document</a> to local authorities requesting them to change their school systems – or, in its own words, to “submit … plans for … reorganisation on comprehensive lines”. In most places, grammar schools were on the way out.</p>
<p>Ever since there have been calls to bring them back, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_making_of_Tory_education_policy_in_p.html?id=g9CeAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">most notably from the right of the Conservative Party</a>. Partly this has been due to a scepticism about comprehensive education, but mostly it is anchored in differing visions of the relationship of the individual to society. </p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679391?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">the revitalisation of Conservatism in a neoliberal direction</a> from the early 1970s onward, grammar schools have become an emblem of a strain of Conservative thinking which emphasises that what the left sees as unjustifiable inequality is in fact simply individuals reaping the benefits of hard work. According to this reading, at face value, comprehensive education emphasised the good of the collective and grammars that of the individual. </p>
<h2>A myth that will not die</h2>
<p>But the evidence undermines such a reading. It is not enough to claim, as the prime minister <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">has done</a>, that the debate on grammars “get[s] lost” in discussing the social mobility question. Evidence matters. She is also wrong to claim this is merely a historical issue: contemporary research on areas where grammar schools outlasted the 1960s has clearly shown their culpability in maintaining social inequality. One <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03054985.2013.776955">2013 study</a> documented how in Buckinghamshire – one of the counties which retained selective state education – children eligible for free school meals because of the wealth of their parents were significantly underrepresented in grammar schools. So why, in the face of the evidence that grammar schools do not promote social mobility, is the argument still made?</p>
<p>Part of the answer is that grammar schools <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/anti-grammar-camp-must-heed-brexits-lessons">did work</a> for some people. Yet the key issue is that they did so at the expense of the community as a whole. Despite May’s claims that they will be but one part of a “diverse” new system, the restoration of a general process of selection by ability implies that such a diverse system will be an unequal one in practice.</p>
<p>It is significant that Michael Gove – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Gove_Legacy.html?id=Dgm4BgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en">who set his face against new grammar schools in his time as education secretary</a> – agreed with supporters of grammars that comprehensives had failed. But he did not share their enthusiasm for a return to selection, favouring instead the academies and free schools which are his legacy. May’s proposals for the return of selection answer a populist Tory <em>cri de coeur.</em> But as Gove knew, it is an answer rooted in myth rather than history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Finn is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>The history of a policy that will not die.Mike Finn, Principal Teaching Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641982016-09-08T14:30:59Z2016-09-08T14:30:59ZGrammar schools have a long history of being dominated by middle-class children<p>Signals that Theresa May is in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37303348">favour of relaxing rules</a> banning the creation of new selective grammar schools in England have provoked robust attacks from opponents of the plan. This included the government’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/07/grammar-schools-expansion-disaster-social-mobility-tsar-alan-milburn">social mobility tsar</a> Alan Milburn, a former minister in the Labour government that introduced the ban, who said it risked creating an “us and them divide” in the education system.</p>
<p>The government needs to explain how its plan to expand grammar schools would help its intended contribution to social mobility, particularly since the prime minister <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36788782">declared</a> a one-nation inclusive approach to economic and social decision-making in front of Number 10 in July when she took office.</p>
<p>The role of grammar schools in promoting social mobility has long been a matter of <a href="https://theconversation.com/grammar-school-plan-might-not-be-worth-the-risk-for-theresa-may-63667">ideological debate</a>, though research has shown there is little evidence that selective schooling in England has led to improved <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">social mobility</a>.</p>
<p>While most studies have compared outcomes from the 1970s and 1980s when the number of grammar schools was in decline, our new <a href="http://oep.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/08/02/oep.gpw039.full">research</a> has analysed what happened after the most important attempt to expand grammar school education to date: the enactment of the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/">1944 Education Act</a> in England and Wales.</p>
<p>The Act marked an attempt to move towards a level playing field for all children by introducing universally free state secondary education and preventing access to state grammar schools based on paying fees. But we found there had been no change in the relative chances of children from poorer home backgrounds either gaining grammar school places or obtaining formal school qualifications. </p>
<h2>What changed in 1944</h2>
<p>The 1944 Act was the culmination of long-term aspirations of Boards of Education in England and Wales to open secondary educational opportunities to all social classes on equal terms. </p>
<p>For decades prior to 1944, grammar schools had already formed an important part of secondary education, but there were significant structural impediments to achieving strong social mobility. Many grammar school places were offered non-competitively on a fee-paying basis. Free grammar school places were allocated on the basis of performance in a competitive 11+ exam, open to children from all backgrounds. But, in the 1920s, only about a third of children won free places, many from better-off families. This rose to about half by the early 1930s. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bYuAAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA98&ots=r4yNzhGo21&dq=he%20education%20experience%20of%20the%20adult%20population%20of%20England%20and%20Wales%20at%20July%201949&pg=PA98#v=onepage&q=he%20education%20experience%20of%20the%20adult%20population%20of%20England%20and%20Wales%20at%20July%201949&f=false">By the end of the 1930s</a>, boys with fathers in managerial or professional occupations were more than four times more likely to gain grammar school entry compared to boys from skilled manual families – and girls were three times more likely. Compared to children from semi-skilled or unskilled households, the top social groups were five to six times more likely to gain entry. </p>
<p>After the Act, rather than their parents paying for a place, pupils were admitted to a selective grammar or technical school only if they performed well in an 11+ exam, taken by all children at the end of junior school. Those who failed to make the grade were sent to a new type of non-selective school, known as a secondary modern.</p>
<h2>Access did not get fairer</h2>
<p>Our research examined whether or not the 1944 Act made a difference to children who would have been disadvantaged in the earlier era because their parents would be unlikely to be able to pay the required secondary school fees. We compared the chances of gaining a grammar school place among boys and girls with managerial or professional fathers compared to those with skilled manual or skilled non-manual fathers or with semi-skilled or unskilled fathers. </p>
<p>We found no evidence of change among these socio-economic groups in the 20 years following the Act compared with the 20 years prior to it. In other words, there was no improvement in social mobility. This was also the case when we looked at family qualifications. Children from families with at least one parent who had qualifications retained a big comparative advantage in gaining a grammar school place after the Act came into force. </p>
<p>We also examined the relative chance of children achieving formal school qualifications. Both in the early part of the 20th century and after the 1944 Act, grammar schools offered nationally recognised exam qualifications at the ages of 16 and 17-18. For the great majority of children who attended non-selective education, there was virtually no chance of obtaining these qualifications because they typically left school before then. The minimum leaving age was 14 before the Act and it rose to 15 in 1947. Again, we found that the chances of children from poorer home backgrounds gaining schools qualifications was unaltered post-1944 compared to pre-1944.</p>
<p>One possible exception was some evidence of a slight improvement in the number of boys with unskilled fathers who achieved formal school qualifications. But it is hard to pin this down to the 1944 Act alone as our data suggest that the gains were starting to appear for cohorts just before the Act was introduced.</p>
<h2>Why it did not boost social mobility</h2>
<p>Leading <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Selection%20for%20secondary%20education%20and%20achievement%20in%20four%20grammar%20schools&author=A.H.%20Halsey&author=L.%20Gardner&publication_year=1953&journal=British%20Journal%20of%20Sociology&volume=4&pages=60-75">observers</a> in the 1950s noted that poorer working class families were worried that their children would have to forego earnings if they remained longer in secondary education. They were also worried about inadequate maintenance grants. Also, some families did not want their children to enter the sort of occupations typically linked to grammar school attendance, for example banking or teaching. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QYqAAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA160&ots=EjMWsdUIMh&dq=An%20enquiry%20into%20parents%E2%80%99%20preferences%20in%20secondary%20education.&pg=PA160#v=onepage&q=An%20enquiry%20into%20parents%E2%80%99%20preferences%20in%20secondary%20education.&f=false">By contrast</a>, parents in professional or supervisory occupations were more likely to express preferences for grammar school education, a longer stay at secondary school and the need for further education after school. </p>
<p>There was also an emerging view among sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s that the use of IQ testing in the 11+ exam – with a large emphasis on areas such as the use of language, correct grammar and sentence logic – tended to benefit families with relatively highly educated parents. By 1965, the Labour government shifted education policy, moving away from selective grammar schools to a generally more non-selective secondary school system: comprehensives. Given a failure to improve educational prospects among children from less well-off home backgrounds, this switch in emphasis was unsurprising.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137047/original/image-20160908-25237-14ctkzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grammar schools started being phased out in the late 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/myf/5551199662/sizes/l">sleepymyf/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although grammar schools still exist in some pockets of the country such as Kent and Buckinghamshire, in 1998, Tony Blair’s Labour government <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/16/grammar-school-supporters-optimistic-18-year-ban-will-be-lifted/">introduced a law</a> prohibiting the expansion of new grammar schools. </p>
<p>If grammar school education is once again to be expanded, then the onus falls on government to clearly <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grammar-schools-return-theresa-may-justine-greening-bring-back-selective-education-uk-a7141271.html">spell out</a> why today’s climate offers improved opportunities across all households and how the selection process can guarantee more opportunity to the less well off.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study has looked at what happend when grammar schools were made free to all children in the 1940s.Robert A Hart, Professor of Economics, University of StirlingMirko Moro, Senior lecturer in economics, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636672016-08-08T16:03:21Z2016-08-08T16:03:21ZGrammar school plan might not be worth the risk for Theresa May<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133382/original/image-20160808-18023-1nujpxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C215%2C4878%2C3241&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Check your grammar.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/50826080@N00/5600984600/in/photolist-9wWvA1-eiwwqi-qcKd2G-6TSVzw-6TNWUz-6TSV7A-6TSUh9-kwkoJk-eNe4AM-bV8kZN-8yCDVg-if6mNt-fWmZ9-deYaUt-odN7gt-dwSaSc-92GDk3-h7LvVz-8UKfJv-a9ncmz-SZmFg-dhrfvz-4Tah2H-9uKD5K-ayjwiv-8yFMmW-8yCJP8-bgM3M4-hppJdi-SZza8-edCH9i-peeRQV-8tUoE5-dRjiZE-f9DqzN-e5TJQw-bxCypS-4zQpZe-bibP6K-cjnT7s-5HjJis-apYUox-cjnSG3-fXKsnp-9bCyds-o5khGG-byCVRR-eNs42g-3cyffH-9TEbXX">Stephen Bowler</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The British government is flying kites, but not for holiday amusement. Word has reached the media that Prime Minister Theresa May is poised to “bring back grammar schools” – state secondary schools which choose pupils by selection in a competitive exam.</p>
<p>Right-wing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/08/rejoice-theresa-mays-grammar-schools-agenda-could-deliver-true-s/">newspapers</a> celebrated the rumour. In their view, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-for-an-honest-debate-about-grammar-schools-62370">institutions</a> bring the promise of social mobility by giving (as they see it) pupils from families who cannot afford private education the chance of academic schooling. It was this claim to social mobility which led then Labour prime minister Harold Wilson to promise that grammar schools would be closed “over my dead body”.</p>
<p>Labour and the Liberal Democrats instantly took to the barricades in opposition, the former saying that selection was “in the dustbin of history”. Lib Dem leader Tim Farron promised his party will block any attempt to bring back grammar schools.</p>
<p>They object to the assumption that other state schools fail to prepare able students academically; then they point to the pattern of recruitment to grammar schools. Only <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS-FACT-SHEET.pdf">3% of pupils</a> receive free school meals (an indicator of social deprivation), compared to 18% across all state schools. The main <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3443191?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">criticism</a> of grammar schools has always been that most of their pupils – who are often prepared for entrance exam with private tuition – are precisely the kind of middle-class families which could afford private schools.</p>
<p>By 1979, most grammar schools had been turned into comprehensives, sixth-form colleges or (in a small number of cases) gone private. Local authorities led the way in this, with Conservatives as well as Labour councillors “bitten” in Margaret Thatcher’s words “by the comprehensive bug” (she reluctantly presided over the closure of more grammar schools than any other education secretary).</p>
<p>In 1998 Tony Blair drew a line under the matter by legislating to prevent the expansion of remaining grammars while making their closure dependent on local referenda (thereby protecting them better than other schools). Blair did not, therefore, <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/may-to-lift-ban-on-grammar-schools-rztf86q5r">“ban” grammars</a>, as has been claimed.</p>
<p>With only 164 of these schools left, competition for entry has intensified considerably. The King Edward VI schools in Birmingham, for example, have an application ratio of ten to one. The foundation which runs them recently responded to concerns about equal access by reserving a certain number of places for disadvantaged pupils. </p>
<h2>Fraught on all sides</h2>
<p>So why is May proposing to reopen a potentially incendiary argument about a tiny, somewhat forgotten corner of the education system? The answer, of course, lies in politics. The status of grammar schools is a totemic issue for populist, middle-class Conservatives. Bringing them back would help make amends for Cameron’s position on them. They were horrified when the Old Etonian had the audacity to criticise them in 2007 by saying. They argued that because he didn’t need a meritocracy to prosper he didn’t understand why less fortunate people did.</p>
<p>If May is seeking to bring back grammar schools, she is showing how far she has swum out into clear blue water, metaphorically speaking, distancing herself from the Cameron metropolitan elite’s liberalism and steering back to traditional British values.</p>
<p>The new prime minister made a point of highlighting the unusually high number of state-educated ministers appointed to her cabinet, compared to he predecessor’s. She is now offering a gift to the right. She has united the other parties in opposition to her plan but she seems to think it worth the risk. She has calculated that their position on the matter may deter strategic groups of voters.</p>
<p>However, it is still a big gamble. Politicians remain divided on grammar schools – even within May’s own party. Many Tory MPs enthusiastically joined Cameron in criticising selection nine years ago, and only a handful of his backbench colleagues is needed to stall any change now. It is also interesting that Education Secretary Justine Greening (the first in that post to be educated wholly at a comprehensive school) has been quiet on the matter so far. It is always possible that the enthusiasm of the Daily Mail is stronger for this policy in the silly season than the determination of the prime minister will be to actually push it through when parliament reassembles in September. </p>
<p>Nor do we really know what the public thinks of bringing back grammar schools. They sometimes tell pollsters that they would like more selection, but they often object when their child is not selected.</p>
<p>The difficult matter of selection may drag May into a debate she does not anticipate or enjoy. And she will probably let it go. However, the longer is spent arguing over grammar schools, the less time is spent supporting the remaining 97% of the school system.</p>
<p>Many non-selective state schools perform as well as grammar schools these days. Selection declined over a generation because of a consensus between parties and educationalists, not overnight by dictat. The number of grammar schools is a drop in the ocean of the school system: even trebling their intake would not give them one in ten pupils. Undoing the work of comprehensive reform would be a vastly expensive and politically debilitating project which no prime minister, let alone one negotiating Brexit, would contemplate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The right is celebrating the potential return of selective schools, but there are major political obstacles to overcome first.Matthew Cole, Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/623702016-07-14T14:44:26Z2016-07-14T14:44:26ZTime for an honest debate about grammar schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130443/original/image-20160713-12386-1meowwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grammar schools: moving with the times. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">michaeljung/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With Theresa May as the new prime minister at the helm of the Conservatives, speculation is already mounting about whether her <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2824689/First-grammar-school-generation-Theresa-sends-strong-message-backing-plans-create-satellite-selective-school-constituency.html">support for a new academically selective grammar school</a> in her own constituency will translate into national educational policy. This will be a big question for her newly appointed secretary of state for education, Justine Greening. </p>
<p>The debate between those who support the reintroduction of grammar schools and those who would like them abolished is a longstanding one with no foreseeable end in sight. In 1998 the Labour prime minister Tony Blair attempted to draw a line under the issue by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34538222">preventing the creation</a> of any new selective schools while allowing for the maintenance of existing grammar schools in England. Before becoming prime minister, David Cameron dismissed Tory MPs angry at his party’s withdrawal of support for grammar schools by calling the debate “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6658613.stm">entirely pointless</a>”. </p>
<p>This is an issue that continues to resurface and recently became even more pressing with the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34535778">government’s decision in October 2015</a> to allow a school in Tonbridge, Kent, to open up an annexe in Sevenoaks, ten miles away. This decision has led to the very real possibility of existing grammar schools applying for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/grammar-school-decision-likely-to-spur-more-bids-for-satellite-developments">similar expansions</a>. Whether or not more will be given permission to do so in the years ahead, many existing grammar schools are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/grammar-school-decision-likely-to-spur-more-bids-for-satellite-developments">currently expanding their intakes</a>.</p>
<p>This latest resurgence of the debate is playing out in an educational landscape which has been radically reformed since 2010. Old arguments about what type of school the government should favour have little traction or meaning in an education system deliberately set up around the principles of autonomy, diversity and choice. Meanwhile, much of the debate continues to ignore and distort the bodies of evidence on crucial issues such as the effectiveness of selection, fair access and social mobility.</p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that we completed a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2016.1184132">recent review</a> looking at how reforms to the education system affect the grammar school debate and examined the evidence underpinning arguments on both sides.</p>
<h2>Old debates, new system</h2>
<p>Grammar schools have been re-positioning themselves within the newly-reformed landscape. Notably, 85% of grammar schools have now become academies – giving them more autonomy. Turning a grammar school into an academy is now literally a <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/exclusive-grammar-schools-given-tick-box-application-form-to-open-new-sites/">tick-box exercise</a>. Adopting a legal status that ostensibly keeps the state at arms-length while granting autonomy over curriculum and admissions policies has had a strong appeal for grammar schools.</p>
<p>New potential roles for grammar schools have also opened up. We are seeing the emergence of new structures and forms of collaboration, such as multi-academy trusts, federations and other partnerships. Supporters argue that grammar schools can play a positive role within these new structures, offering leadership within the system. Notable examples include the King Edward VI foundation in Birmingham <a href="http://www.schoolsofkingedwardvi.co.uk/school/king-edward-vi-sheldon-heath-academy/">which in 2010 took over</a> the poorly-performing Sheldon Heath Community Arts College. There are also current <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/king-edward-vi-foundation-school-considers-becoming-multi-academy-trust-after-successfully-taking-a6872356.html">proposals</a> for the foundation to become a multi-academy trust.</p>
<p>The Cameron government’s <a href="https://goo.gl/4ZvisH">quasi-market</a> approach to making education policy – and that of New Labour before him – has favoured looser and often overlapping structures that allow for a diversity of provision and responsiveness to demand. The central focus is on standards rather than a state-approved blueprint for all schools. This involves intervention where standards are low and expansion where standards are high and there is demand for places. </p>
<p>This policy approach neither supports nor opposes grammar schools – it tries to sidestep the question entirely, leaving many concerns about fair access and the impact of academic selection unanswered.</p>
<h2>Fair access</h2>
<p>A disproportionately small number of disadvantaged pupils attend grammar schools. Contrary to the claims of grammar school proponents, the <a href="https://www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=97485&p=0">evidence</a> shows that these disparities in intake are not entirely accounted for by the fact that grammar schools are located in more affluent areas nor by their high-attaining intake.</p>
<p>Yet grammar schools (and academies) are in a position to use their control over admissions policies and application procedures to seek <a href="https://theconversation.com/english-grammar-schools-try-to-shake-off-middle-class-bias-23806">more balanced intakes</a> and fairer access should they wish to do so. Whether or not they have the ability or inclination remains to be seen.</p>
<p>The issue of school admissions is a good example of where the public debate has failed to keep pace with the realities of the system. <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/evidence-effects-selective-educational-systems/">Previous research</a> by the Sutton Trust found that some of the most socially selective schools in the country are comprehensive schools, at least in name.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/11/grammar-schools-tory-rightwinger-selection">Pitting comprehensive schools against grammar schools</a>, therefore, only loosely grasps the issue of social selectivity. With its emphasis on school types this distracts from the larger issue: the content of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/389388/School_Admissions_Code_2014_-_19_Dec.pdf">school admissions code</a> and how to ensure compliance with it. If more balanced school intakes are desired, the focus should be on rules around admissions and permissible over-subscription criteria for all schools.</p>
<h2>What are grammar schools the answer to?</h2>
<p>Much of the current debate is predicated on the superior effectiveness of grammar schools. But the evidence <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2016.1184132">we have reviewed</a> suggests that <a href="https://www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=97485&p=0">the academic benefit</a> of attending a grammar school is relatively small. Even these estimates are likely to be inflated by differences in intake that are not taken into account in the statistics.</p>
<p>Evidence on selection, both as <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/ces/ifodic/v7y2009i1p26-34.html">part of the education system</a> itself and <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/setting-or-streaming/">within schools</a> through setting or streaming, suggest there is little overall benefit to children’s academic achievement. The overall effect is, at best, zero-sum and most likely negative, with higher-attaining pupils benefiting at the expense of lower-attaining pupils, leading to an <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">increase in inequality</a>. The <a href="http://www.nosacredcows.co.uk/blog/2867/thoughts_on_grammar_schools.html">question</a> remains whether that is a price worth paying.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are grammar schools a force for good in England’s reformed education system?Tom Perry, Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of BirminghamRebecca Morris, Lecturer in Secondary English Education/Research Associate, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/492482015-10-16T12:15:24Z2015-10-16T12:15:24ZWhy do grammar schools remain so popular?<p>The education secretary Nicky Morgan has announced <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34535778">her decision to allow</a> a grammar school in Kent to build a new “annexe” providing additional places for 450 girls. </p>
<p>There are 163 existing state-run grammar schools in the UK, which admit pupils based on academic selection – but legislation was passed in 1998 prohibiting the opening of any new grammar schools. Morgan’s long-awaited, but controversial <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2015-10-15/HCWS242/">decision</a> will allow Weald of Kent Grammar School in Tonbridge to expand by opening a satellite school nine miles away in Sevenoaks. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/education/articles/story/grammar-school-extension-open-floodgates-labour">criticised</a> about the decision, she <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/nicky-morgan-denies-grammar-school-kent-open-floodgates?CMP=share_btn_tw">claimed</a> it would not “open the floodgates” for more grammar schools. </p>
<p>Grammar schools continue to be popular among the general public. A poll published in April 2015 by <a href="http://comres.co.uk/polls/ngsa-grammar-schools-poll/">ComRes found 51% of British adults</a> support allowing new grammar schools to open. Their appeal seems to endure, despite strong research evidence showing that grammar schools <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2014/abstract323.html">generate inequality</a> and <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v93y2009i7-8p965-973.html">perpetuate privilege</a>. But why?</p>
<p>A key part of the myth surrounding grammar schools is that they are good for social mobility. We know that <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">this is not true</a> – that pupils from affluent families are much more likely to get into grammar schools. But it seems to need just one or two public figures to say that they grew up in a poor family, went to grammar school, and, well, “look at me now”. These anecdotes “prove” that grammar schools help social mobility in the same way that knowing someone who smoked 50 cigarettes a day and lived to be 90 years old “proves” that smoking doesn’t kill you.</p>
<h2>Discipline and respect</h2>
<p>Another part of the reason for the apparent popularity of grammar schools is that they are only half of the story. For ever “winner” who attended a grammar school, there are two or three “losers” who were sent to the old <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/new-grammar-school-decision-how-secondary-moderns-are-responding/">“secondary moderns”</a> where people who failed the 11-plus entrance exam went. I suspect that public opinion would be different if people were asked whether they favoured opening more secondary modern schools. It is inherent in selective systems that you can’t have one without the other – and yet the discussion is only ever about the rosier part of the story.</p>
<p>It may also be that the appeal of grammar schools lies in an image they <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30483031">conjure up</a> of good classroom discipline, tidy desks and respectful pupils. But such an atmosphere is by no means restricted to grammar schools. This is part of the success story of some of the top-performing comprehensive schools. Famously <a href="http://www.mca.mossbourne.org/the-academy-2/welcome/">Mossbourne Community Academy</a> in Hackney has that ethos, alongside a number of the best academy chains. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/19/why-no-excuses-charter-schools-mold-very-submissive-students-starting-in-kindergarten/">No Excuses</a>” charter schools in the US take a similar approach while catering for some of the most disadvantaged children in the country and delivering excellent results. There are no selection exams – admission is by lottery (they are very popular).</p>
<h2>The impact of school selection</h2>
<p>Grammar school systems reduce social mobility, raise inequality and make family background much more important for school attainment. The international evidence is clear on this. Comparing across countries, assigning children to different schools by an exam early on in life <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w11124">raises inequality</a>. </p>
<p>Also, this assignment, or “tracking” as it is called in most other countries, from an early age across schools <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp2348.pdf">reinforces the impact of family background</a> on attainment and labour market outcomes and so reduces social mobility. </p>
<p>A number of studies have recently looked at the long-term effects of a switch to a comprehensive school system – without selection based on attainment – in the Nordic countries in the 1950s to 1970s. <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v54y2010i4p483-500.html">Researchers found</a> that the switch to a comprehensive system led to a weakening of the influence of <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/04-10.html">family background</a> on attainment. Others <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v93y2009i7-8p965-973.html">found that</a> the elimination of a two-track system based on attainment in Finland substantially reduced the dependence of children’s future income on their parents’ circumstances. </p>
<p>Evidence from the UK says the same. Research at Bristol’s Centre for Market and Public Organisation <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmpo/migrated/documents/gregg.doc">shows</a> that there are few children eligible for free school meals in grammar schools and that while the marginal pupil (who just passed the exam) in grammar schools does better, the marginal pupil (who just failed) in a comprehensive school does worse. Others have also found <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/publications/working-papers/iser/2014-05.pdf">positive effects</a> on the attainment of those who pass the 11-plus exam and mixed results on longer-term outcomes such as earnings. Other <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2014/abstract323.html">research</a> from the UK has shown that children growing up in grammar school areas – where some would have gone to a grammar and some to a comprehensive – face much higher earnings inequality later in life than those growing in areas without grammar schools.</p>
<h2>Legal challenges likely</h2>
<p>It seems possible that the Sevenoaks annexe decision will face legal challenge. If it stands, what will it mean? Probably the actual impact in the local area will not be large. If pupil numbers in Kent were static, then more grammar school places would necessarily mean more “winners” and fewer “losers”. In this instance, presumably the pass mark to get into the grammar school would have been lowered so that the classes weren’t short of pupils – this would actually have been good news, evening things up a bit. But pupil numbers are actually rising in Kent – meaning there is competition for places – so this increase in grammar places merely perpetuates the inequality. The <a href="http://www.educationdatalab.org.uk/Blog/October-2015/So-who-will-get-to-go-to-a-grammar-school-if-the-S.aspx#.Vh-oW36rSUl">impact on the local pupils’ chances</a> will not be large.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"654557040631791616"}"></div></p>
<p>The big picture is surely that the present situation cannot last. As Sam Freedman, research director of TeachFirst, said <a href="https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/654557040631791616">on Twitter</a>, it is still against the law to open a new grammar school. Having an “annexe” nine miles distant from the main school is so obviously an abuse of the spirit of this that if more are to follow, surely the law will need to be changed.</p>
<p>And the fact that a decision on the annexe was initially rejected by the former education secretary Michael Gove and was then <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-32786033">pushed back</a> beyond the election date suggests that everyone knows how controversial it was going to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Burgess receives funding from ESRC and the DfE. </span></em></p>A new grammar school has been given the go-head in Kent, despite evidence that selective education increases inequality.Simon Burgess, Professor of Economics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/404182015-04-23T09:28:45Z2015-04-23T09:28:45ZManifesto Check: UKIP’s controversial take on education<p>In many respects, UKIP’s education <a href="http://www.ukip.org/manifesto2015">manifesto</a> pledges are unremarkable, and their broad approach is similar to that taken by a number of the other parties. For example, UKIP pledges the need for education that is responsive to each child’s needs, emphasises the importance of high quality, well supported teachers who have high status in society, and stresses the importance of primary education in particular. </p>
<p>The party is correct in saying that these are all important elements of a high quality education system. But their proposals on grammar schools and higher education are, by contrast, much more controversial.</p>
<h2>Hard-working British teachers</h2>
<p>There is good empirical evidence that high quality teachers and good teaching is a critically important influence on children’s achievement. One <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmpo/migrated/documents/wp212.pdf">recent study</a> for England found that being taught by a high quality teacher adds about a half a GCSE point per subject, compared to being taught by a low quality one. This is consistent with further evidence from a <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2teachers-impact-report-final.pdf">recent review</a> by the Sutton Trust.</p>
<p>There is little doubt that to achieve a high quality education system, we should be focusing as much on teachers as on other elements of the system, such as school structures. It is also true that in many countries with high quality education systems, teachers have particularly high status in society relative to other occupations. <a href="http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-teacher-and-principal-quality/">Finland</a> is one such example. But how we achieve that improvement of teacher status in society is left unsaid.</p>
<p>The big pledge in the UKIP manifesto is their aim to reduce class sizes to 25 pupils. Smaller class sizes <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w7656">can bring about improvements</a> in pupil achievement but largely in the primary years, and only with quite large reductions in class size. So this policy is unlikely to significantly improve pupil achievement. </p>
<p>But then, UKIP is not claiming that reducing class sizes will improve pupil achievement. Instead, the party argues that the reductions will ease teacher workloads and alleviate parental concerns. The costs of reducing class sizes by one sixth would – other things equal – increase the costs per pupil by a similar amount. This is money that might be used to do other things, so it’s critically important to know where this additional funding comes from, in order to understand the impact of this particular pledge.</p>
<p>UKIP also makes a specific pledge that may appeal to teachers, and that is to decrease the amount of paperwork that teachers have to deal with. They even mention specific examples of excess paper work, such as requirements for overly detailed individual lesson plans. Here again, the party is correct that workload does appear to be an issue. There is <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/20391/1/RR302_-_TALIS_report_NC.pdf">good evidence</a> that teachers’ working hours are longer in the UK than in some other countries. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/highlights-from-education-at-a-glance_2076264x">recent OECD report</a> found that on average, teachers in England work around 46 hours per week – nine hours more than the average for all the countries surveyed. Yet the survey also indicated that face-to-face teaching time in England is similar to that in other countries, at 20 hours per week. So it follows that teachers in England are busy doing things other than face to face teaching, including many of the tasks identified by the UKIP manifesto as “unnecessary paperwork”. Though the impact of such a policy on pupil achievement is unknown, it is likely to be beneficial to teacher well-being, which may in turn impact on teacher quality.</p>
<p>UKIP also pledges to abolish performance-related pay for teachers. On this issue, UKIP may be premature. The most recent reforms to link teacher performance to pay have not been in place long enough for a full evaluation. <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmpo/migrated/documents/wp113.pdf">Earlier evidence</a> on the impact of the previous English performance pay scheme for teachers suggested a positive impact on pupil achievement. However, the evidence from the US is not so definitive, and the precise nature of the performance-related pay scheme is important in determining whether it works or not, and certainly not all do. Hence evaluating the current arrangements is an essential first step.</p>
<h2>Grammar school controversy</h2>
<p>UKIP, along with many of the other political parties, is correct to stress the importance of primary education, and there is <a href="http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2559/1/2559.pdf">strong evidence</a> that the early years are critical for children’s development. Indeed we know that <a href="http://www.rlab.lse.ac.uk/opening/papers/feinstein.pdf">poor children fall behind their wealthier counterparts</a> as early as age three, so there is no doubt that the earliest years and primary education are very important. </p>
<p>It is less clear from research that UKIP’s proposals to abolish key stage one tests in primary school and appoint science coordinators will really improve children’s academic achievement, increase the uptake of science at secondary level and reduce the gender gap in science subjects. The latter pledges on science are too vague to determine whether they will have a positive effect, and the gender gap in science take up at secondary is linked to many issues that a science coordinator is unlikely to solve.</p>
<p>There is one obvious stand out policy from UKIP: the desire to “see a grammar school in every town”. Whether or not grammar schools are beneficial has been the subject of vitriolic debate since the 1960s, and there is now a substantial, though controversial, evidence base on which we can draw. Broadly, <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.187.3202&rep=rep1&type=pdf">research indicates</a> that having a grammar school system tends to benefit the high achievers, but to the detriment of lower achievers. </p>
<p>There is a long-standing belief that the grammar school system enabled poor but bright children to succeed, but the research findings suggest that this has not been the case on average, and that poor students have a very low chance of attending grammar schools. <a href="http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/47/3/684.short">International evidence</a> also indicates that the move to a comprehensive system seems to be broadly beneficial, particularly for students from lower socio-economic groups. UKIP does propose a reformed grammar system with adequate funding for secondary moderns and lots of opportunities to move into grammars at ages beyond 11. But overall, there is little evidence to support such a policy, and the upheaval to the system would be substantial.</p>
<h2>Unnecessary upheaval</h2>
<p>UKIP has a number of curriculum proposals, but without knowing more detail it is impossible to say whether policies like providing first aid training to students will be beneficial, or take time out of other subjects and reduce achievement. Nor is it possible to tell if proposals to reverse some recent reforms to GCSEs and AS levels will be positive. But one thing is clear: many feel that the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/michael-goves-curriculum-reforms-will-result-in-total-chaos-teachers-claim-8691328.html">relentless pace of change</a> in terms of curriculum reform is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/apr/01/new-curriculum-teaching-concepts-younger">putting the education system at serious risk</a>, and all politicians would do well to let changes bed in.</p>
<p>On Ofsted, UKIP appears to acknowledge teachers’ criticisms of the system. Some of the party’s proposals may be welcomed, for example that complaints against Ofsted will get investigated independently, and that inspections will only be undertaken by well-qualified former teachers. UKIP also stresses the need for short and focused inspections, addressing the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom and avoiding tick box approaches. There is little detail in the manifesto about how this would be achieved in practice, but there is no doubt that many in the sector would <a href="http://www.naht.org.uk/welcome/news-and-media/blogs/russell-hobby-general-secretary/ofsted-reform-part-one/">welcome reform</a>.</p>
<h2>Further and higher education</h2>
<p>UKIP also wishes to see the development of vocational schools and colleges, as well as apprenticeships taken at age 16. One problem with this is that <a href="http://217.35.77.12/research/england/education/RR834.pdf">the evidence</a> indicates that employers currently tend to value higher rather than lower level apprenticeships. If students are offered a low level apprenticeship route, there is a danger that students would end up entering the labour market without sufficiently high levels of literacy, numeracy and other essential skills. </p>
<p>One of the key challenges with the current apprenticeship system is persuading employers to take on apprentices in the first place. Since employers are currently reluctant to hire 16-19 year old school leavers, it is not clear how UKIP will persuade sufficient numbers of employers to participate in this endeavour, or indeed whether this policy is at all feasible.</p>
<p>On higher education, UKIP argues that tuition fees have been disastrous for young people’s prospects and that we have too many graduates leading to many having to take up low skilled jobs. Its solution is to cap the number of students going into higher education and try to increase the incentive for them to take economically valuable subjects in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. They say nothing about what they would do about the level of fees. </p>
<p>While deeply unpopular, the income contingent nature of the students’ loans does in fact protect them, so that they only repay if they are earning above the threshold. Indeed, <a href="http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Pages/TrendsInUndergraduateRecruitment.aspx#.VTd7diFViko">there is evidence</a> that tuition fees have not put off students from going to university, although the long term impact of having fees at £9,000 remains unknown. </p>
<p>On the other hand, UKIP is right in saying many graduates end up doing non graduate jobs, and that many STEM degrees appear to be <a href="http://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/the_labour_market_value_of_stem">more highly valued by employers</a>. </p>
<p>So the party’s proposal to make STEM degrees free if the individual goes on to work in a STEM occupation is interesting. It would be extremely difficult to implement in practice. There would be massive temptation to game the system, with companies rebranding jobs as STEM regardless of their content, and universities providing low level sciences courses, which may not be of much economic value. But UKIP is almost certainly right in saying that such a radical policy would alter students’ subject choices. </p>
<p>It is likely that this policy would come at substantial net cost. And it remains to be seen whether UKIP’s proposal to abolish tuition fee loans for EEA students could raise enough revenue for the government to pay the STEM tuition fee bill. </p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/manifesto-check-2015">Manifesto Check</a> deploys academic expertise to scrutinise the parties’ plans.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Vignoles receives funding for her research from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Institute for Fiscal studies, the Nuffield Foundation, the Department for Education and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. But this article does not represent the views of the research councils. The Conversation's Manifesto Checks are produced in partnership with Nesta and the Alliance for Useful Evidence. </span></em></p>Our expert takes stock of UKIP’s policies on early childhood, primary, secondary, further, and higher education. It’s a mixed bag.Anna Vignoles, Professor of Education, Jesus College, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371812015-02-05T10:18:54Z2015-02-05T10:18:54ZWhat education policy would look like under UKIP<p>Until now, the policies of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) have been symbolic rather than substantive. Policy statements by the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, have been designed to build a populist support base rather than blueprint the practical work of government. </p>
<p>UKIP has defined itself by what it does not like – Europe, immigration, modernism – against the backdrop of an imagined past when Britain was Britain, and Britain was Great. This stance has worked well, with the party <a href="http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2015/01/ashcroft-national-poll-con-29-lab-28-lib-dem-9-ukip-15-green-11/">achieving 15% support</a> in some polls.</p>
<p>With this change to the political game, the UK election on May 7 now has several possible outcomes. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/04/david-cameron-ukip-coalition-nigel-farage">One is a coalition government</a> bringing the Conservatives together with UKIP. Suddenly, there is the real possibility of UKIP ministers with responsibility for portfolios that make a difference to people’s lives. UKIP’s positions will come under more scrutiny. A key area is education, including higher education.</p>
<p>UKIP’s website <a href="http://www.ukip.org/policies_for_people">contains a list of “policy announcements”</a> made at the most recent party conference at Doncaster. These are essentially bullet points designed to hit popular buttons, without detail. At this stage there are just nine sentences on education and skills. Farage’s party promises that “more detailed announcements will be made in the run up to the 2015 General Election”. However, we can infer more of UKIP’s likely education policy in government by extrapolating its stance on other issues, especially immigration.</p>
<h2>Schools and apprenticeships</h2>
<p>UKIP takes us back to the future with proposals for apprenticeships decoupled from secondary schooling, and the restoration of grammar schools for selected students. <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/479574/Tax-cuts-and-more-grammar-schools-Nigel-Farage-s-plans-for-UKs-shameful-social-mobility">Farage argues</a> that this will restore older routes for working class social mobility, though he sidesteps the fact that these mechanisms <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">only ever provided real mobility for a small minority</a>. Grammar schools, like private schools today, were bastions of the middle class.</p>
<p>There are no UKIP proposals for lifting the educational and social outcomes of mainstream state school students, except that UKIP “supports the principle of free schools that are open to the whole community and uphold British values”, and “schools will be investigated by OFSTED” on “the presentation of a petition signed by 25% of parents or governors”. This sounds like a formula for continuing culture wars around multiculturalism.</p>
<h2>Scrap the 50% university target</h2>
<p>In higher education the most important statement so far is that “UKIP will scrap the target of 50% of school leavers going to university”. This is a classic pre-Thatcher conservative position on higher education, consistent with the idea of restoring grammar schools, which presumes that only a small number of naturally bright students are capable of advanced educational achievement. </p>
<p>In opposing the now dominant UK policy of growing university participation, UKIP has set itself against the policy norm in Europe and throughout most of the world, and against popular demand for expanding opportunities.</p>
<p>It has also set itself against the main social and economic trend. <a href="http://data.uis.unesco.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EDULIT_DS&popupcustomise=true&lang=en">UNESCO data shows</a> that between 1992 and 2012 the worldwide gross tertiary enrolment ratio, including both university and non-university students, rose from 15% to 32%. Across the whole of Europe and North America, participation in tertiary education now exceeds 60% with the majority of students in degree courses. There is every sign that the educated population will keep on increasing. Nostalgia for a return to a more exclusive education system may appeal to some older voters but is futile symbolism rather than genuine policy.</p>
<p>At this stage, UKIP has made no policy statement on tuition and student loans, except that it would remove tuition fees from students in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine on the condition that they live and work in the UK for five years after graduation. UKIP’s deputy leader and education spokesman, the MEP Paul Nuttall, <a href="http://www.ukip.org/ukip_education_spokesman_paul_nuttall_mep_has_expressed_backing_for_students_who_are_protesting_today_in_london_over_tuition_fees">backed students campaigning</a> to abolish all fees in November 2014, but this is not UKIP policy.</p>
<h2>Stance on international students</h2>
<p>In its only statement about international education, UKIP says that students from the EU would pay the same fee as non-EU students. This is consistent with the party’s position for Britain to leave the EU.</p>
<p>Of larger concern is UKIP’s unstated position on non-EU students. According to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/32395/11-980-estimating-value-of-education-exports.pdf">estimates</a> by the Department of Business and Industry, UK education and training exports are worth £14 billion a year to the UK economy, including £2.4bn directly from student tuition fees. In a climate hostile to immigration, reducing non-EU student numbers is an easy way to bring down net annual migration numbers. </p>
<p>Non-EU students already grapple with a restrictive, slow and expensive visa regime; increased regular surveillance during the period of study; and reduced graduate work rights. Graduates must find a job paying £24,000 per year within four months or lose their visas. In Canada and Australia the equivalent international student graduates have access to bridging visas that provide them with two years or more to find work. </p>
<p>In a recent move that can be read as a prominent Conservative leader trying to out-UKIP UKIP, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/05/theresa-may-student-immigration-james-dyson">home minister Teresa May argued</a> that post-graduation bridging visas for non-EU students should be totally removed. The further truncation of graduate work opportunities would probably trigger a sharp decline in international student entry. A tough approach to visas and the inward movement of foreign talent would also harm UK science and technology, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/04/theresa-may-foreign-postgraduates-students-qualification-vote-dyson">business leaders have argued</a>, especially as the US, Germany, Switzerland and other science-strong nations provide open doorways. </p>
<p>The possibility that UKIP may urge for May’s policy or something similar within a coalition government, and that the Conservatives would listen, is a principal concern of UK universities.</p>
<hr>
<p>Next read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-five-options-for-student-tuition-fees-that-politicians-have-to-choose-from-32847">The five options for student tuition fees that politicians have to choose from.</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Marginson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Until now, the policies of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) have been symbolic rather than substantive. Policy statements by the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, have been designed to build a populist support…Simon Marginson, Professor of International Higher Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/344672014-11-21T06:03:17Z2014-11-21T06:03:17ZGrammar schools don’t give pupils a better chance of getting into elite universities<p>The domination of top British universities by people who have attended private schools remains controversial. Defenders of the status quo <a href="https://theconversation.com/gap-between-state-and-private-school-admissions-to-top-unis-due-to-grades-not-bias-30178">would argue</a> that successful applicants to Russell Group universities are simply the brightest and the best, and if a disproportionate number of places at these universities go to people who have been to private schools, that simply reflects the fact that talent is concentrated in these schools.</p>
<p>Others would argue that the best way to provide bright working class kids with the same opportunities as their wealthy peers at private schools is to provide selective grammar schools within the state sector. Earlier this month, <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/533123/David-Cameron-lift-ban-grammar-schools-Tory-MPs">leading Conservative MPs called for the ban</a> on the creation of new grammar schools to be lifted. This was followed by the announcement that plans for the first new grammar school annexe in 20 years had been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-30001130">revived by Kent County Council</a>.</p>
<p>But how much difference does the type of secondary school a child attends actually make to their chances of going to a top university? </p>
<h2>Private beats grammar</h2>
<p>Our forthcoming study to be published in the December edition of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/core20/current#.VG4cPcnvbIo">Oxford Review of Education</a>, assessed the link between secondary schooling and university access for the generation born in 1970. We analysed the education histories of more than 7,700 people in England and Wales whose lives are being followed by the <a href="http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/page.aspx?&sitesectionid=795">1970 British Cohort Study</a>. </p>
<p>Children who attended private and grammar schools were generally from more advantaged backgrounds and had higher test scores before they started secondary school than those at comprehensives, so it was important to take this into account. We were able to exploit detailed information on the cohort members’ family backgrounds and educational histories. </p>
<p>This allowed us to examine the role of childhood socio-economic circumstances, and to assess whether the type of secondary school a child attended made a difference for children from similar backgrounds and with similar test scores up to the age of ten.</p>
<p>Once we had controlled for these factors, there was no statistically significant advantage in the chances of accessing a top university for people who had been to grammar schools compared to those who had been to comprehensives. We were very surprised by this result – as it is generally assumed that being at a school with a high-achieving peer group is beneficial. One possible explanation for the lack of an advantage for grammar school children is that high achievers didn’t stand out as much at grammar schools as at comprehensives.</p>
<h2>Double the advantage</h2>
<p>Yet we found a powerful advantage associated with private schooling, especially in the case of gaining an elite degree. The private school advantage is partly explained by better school exam results. But even when we compared people with the same exam results at 16 and 18, respondents who had been to private schools had over double the chance of going to a Russell Group university than people who had attended comprehensive schools. </p>
<p>This debunks the view that the domination of elite universities by the privately educated was justified by the concentration of the pool of talent in such schools. Our findings are in line with <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201403/">longstanding results</a> showing that state educated pupils outperform their comparably qualified privately educated peers once at university. </p>
<h2>Parental influence</h2>
<p>We were also interested in the influence of people’s social background in childhood. We found that having a parent who was a university graduate was linked to far greater chances of university access. And this difference was not simply explained by the children of graduates doing better at school. </p>
<p>Even controlling for cognitive scores and school examination results, people who had a graduate parent had a 50% higher chance of going to university than those whose parents had no qualifications, and the gap was even bigger in the case of access to Russell Group universities.</p>
<p>This research applies to a particular generation born in 1970. But the findings are still relevant today. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12021/abstract">Recent research</a> has shown that pupils from lower social class backgrounds are still less likely to apply to Russell Group institutions than pupils with similar qualifications from higher class backgrounds. State school applicants are also less likely to apply and to be awarded a place if they do apply, compared to private school pupils.</p>
<h2>Bright not enough</h2>
<p>Our findings show that an individual’s educational attainment throughout childhood and adolescence is very important to their higher education chances – but being bright is not necessarily enough. </p>
<p>Advantaged social origins and private schooling raises the chances of getting a degree, and especially an elite degree, above and beyond test scores and examination attainment. Given the <a href="https://theconversation.com/act-now-on-social-mobility-or-britain-will-freewheel-into-a-permanently-divided-country-33200">domination of Britain’s ruling class</a> by graduates of private schools and elite universities, these non-meritocratic processes have important repercussions.</p>
<hr>
<p>Next read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-do-grammar-schools-boost-social-mobility-28121">Hard evidence: Do grammar schools boost social mobility? </a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Sullivan receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).</span></em></p>The domination of top British universities by people who have attended private schools remains controversial. Defenders of the status quo would argue that successful applicants to Russell Group universities…Alice Sullivan, Director of the 1970 British Cohort Study, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/316642014-11-13T06:16:10Z2014-11-13T06:16:10ZPrivate school pupils doubly advantaged by private tutoring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59153/original/tz57rbk4-1410861455.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unfair advantage?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-215994538/stock-photo-tutoring.html?src=WCWVcQoa38v1W2oke51eLA-1-86">tutoring by v.schlitching/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Private tutoring is used by many parents around the world to supplement their children’s education and boost their chances of success at school. In England, several surveys have estimated the prevalence of private tutoring in state-maintained schools. Now it’s <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/enrichment-brief/">becoming clearer</a> that those parents already paying a premium to send their children to private schools are just as likely to pay for extra tutoring. </p>
<p>Parents employ private tutors to raise their children’s attainment and performance in tests and examinations, particularly at transition points between primary, secondary and higher education. But <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24850139">concerns have been raised</a> about the use of private tutoring by families wishing to ensure their children gain places in popular state schools, such as grammar schools, and so denying places to children from less affluent families.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.stroudlife.co.uk/Grammar-school-results-unveiled-new-test/story-23160769-detail/story.html">New “tutor-proof” 11 plus tests</a>, designed by researchers at Durham University’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, are being deployed by some schools in an effort to level the playing field. </p>
<h2>Who hires tutors?</h2>
<p>The first <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/734/">major survey of state school students</a> undertaken in 2003-4 estimated that one in four, or 27%, of those in years six, 11 and 13 received tutoring at the time of the survey or had done so in the past. Unsurprisingly, family background influences who gets private tutoring. </p>
<p>Parents who are more affluent and have higher levels of education are more likely to employ tutors. In 2003-4, the overall percentage of state school students with tutors was 39% if fathers had a university education, 24% if fathers had vocational qualifications and 21% if fathers had only a school education. The disparity was greatest in year 11 when students whose father had a university education were twice as likely to have tutoring compared to students whose father had only a school education.</p>
<h2>Popular in private schools</h2>
<p>Now, national and international surveys are broadening this perspective to show that it’s not just parents with children at state-maintained schools who are hiring tutors. In the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmentpisa/pisa-qualitytimeforstudentslearninginandoutofschool.htm">2006 Programme for International Student Assessment</a> (PISA) students were asked to identify how many hours they spent participating in lessons out of school. </p>
<p>The results for England showed that 21% of private school children had one-to-one tutoring, broadly similar to the 17.1% of state school children who were also seeing a tutor. Likewise, of those who received tutoring and were in private schools 6.1% were tutored in small groups, similar to 7.5% in state schools.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/our-work/research/item/parent-power/">2013 study</a> in England by the educational charity the Sutton Trust suggests that there is a larger gap – with parents whose children attended private schools being significantly more likely to also pay for private tutoring: 27% of private school children compared to 14% from state schools.</p>
<p>The limited data available reinforces the view that it is not only parents in the state sector who turn to private tutors to boost their children’s achievement. For individual parents and their children this may be a rational choice. </p>
<p>But from a national perspective, the extent of extra investment in some children’s education raises issues around equality. Some young people may be equally capable but receive less support for national tests and examinations that are the gateway to educational opportunities and future employment.</p>
<p>Discrepancies in findings from these studies may be due to differences in samples and questions, as the PISA survey gathered information from students – whereas the study in England surveyed parents. Nevertheless, they point to the extensive additional resources being deployed by parents whose children attend private schools.</p>
<h2>No results guaranteed</h2>
<p>These parents already pay a high price for their education in the hope that this will buy high-quality teaching and the best possible results. It may seem surprising that they also pay for additional private tutoring. <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.j-e-r-o.com%2Findex.php%2Fjero%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F406%2F191&ei=6f4XVNeVEPHn7AbwiYHYCQ&usg=AFQjCNF8hNVLXjwaJuiIYqUs8FInXHc2CQ&bvm=bv.75097201,d.ZGU&cad=rja">Likely explanations</a> include the desire to maintain a competitive advantage over other privileged students, placing a high value on hard work, effort and educational success, and parents’ high aspirations for their children.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.ioe.ac.uk/53434.html">several studies</a> indicate that the <a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ813218">effects</a> of private tutoring on a child’s success are limited once factors such as a students’ prior attainment and family background are taken into account. Overall, some individual tutors and carefully designed tutoring programmes can be effective, but their results are not guaranteed. </p>
<p>Agencies that cater specifically for students in private schools have been in existence for many years, yet this sector of the market has remained relatively unexplored by researchers. This is partly due to difficulties involved in gathering information from students in private schools. </p>
<p>But the market of private tutoring is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/expateducation/10000247/Aspirational-parents-should-be-wary-of-cowboy-tutors.html">currently unregulated</a> although early steps are being taken by <a href="http://www.thetutorsassociation.org.uk/">The Tutors’ Association</a> to promote professional standards among tutors and agencies. While some well-informed parents may be able to source an effective tutor, other parents may not be well-placed to do so.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judy Ireson has received funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>Private tutoring is used by many parents around the world to supplement their children’s education and boost their chances of success at school. In England, several surveys have estimated the prevalence…Judy Ireson, Emerita Professor of Psychology in Education, Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.