Lost in the grammars debate

I've blogged at the Sutton Trust website on the grammar schools debate

It was just three months before Tony Blair’s historic victory in 1997. Ben Chapman was fighting as the Labour candidate in the Wirral South by-election. And David Blunkett, the shadow education secretary, was visiting the Wirral County Grammar School. While he had a cup of tea with the headteacher, the late Eric Forth, then the schools minister, protested outside that Labour was no friend of grammars.

But, by then the opposition had decided to park the issue of grammar schools if it got into government. As Blunkett's special adviser, I helped devise the 1998 legislation that is now reported daily as the ‘ban’ on new grammar schools. I briefed its details to the media ahead of that Wirral visit. But ironically, while it did indeed stop new academic selection, the legislation also made it hard to close existing grammars without parental consent. And that was as much its primary purpose. Neither Blair nor Blunkett wanted to be distracted from their wider plans to improve education by a huge debate about the remaining 166 grammar schools. (A few have since merged so there are now 163).

Nearly twenty years later, the last few weeks have shown us why. Theresa May’s speech at Downing Street last week may have had four key points to it – including, interestingly, a plan to require private schools to justify their charitable status by engaging more fully in state school partnerships – but most of the acres of coverage and debate have focused on ‘plans’ for ‘new grammar schools’.

But there are real dangers in making this the big focus of education policy, let alone the cornerstone of the Government’s drive for social mobility.

The first – and most obvious – reason is that the evidence is pretty thin that grammar schools improve social mobility. In the Green Paper, the Government quotes from a lengthy 2008 Durham University report published by the Sutton Trust. That report looked at GCSE results in existing grammar schools and found that those from poorer backgrounds who are highly able do marginally better than similar pupils in comprehensives.

To quote in full from the report: “We find that pupils eligible for [free school meals] appear to suffer marginally less educational disadvantage if they attend grammar schools. The difference is equivalent to about one-eighth of a GCSE grade; although this is statistically significant, it is certainly not large. It also seems possible that FSM pupils in grammar schools may typically be quite different from FSM pupils as a whole in ways that are not well measured, so we should be cautious about interpreting this as a strong endorsement of grammar schools.”[i]

At the same time, our more recent reports from 2013 showed that less than 3% of grammar school pupils come from an FSM background, 13% come from outside the state school system, largely independent preparatory schools. Perhaps more significantly, given the focus of the Prime Minister’s speech on those on modest incomes, the Anna Vignoles and IFS research[ii] showed a direct correlation between income and likelihood of grammar entry in each IDACI quintile.

In any case, at a political level, given the strength of opposition on the Conservative benches, there is no guarantee the 1998 legislation can be overturned in the Commons, let alone the Lords, where an alliance of crossbenchers, Labour and LibDems, as well as sceptical Tories could defeat it. Where Tony Blair could turn to the Conservatives when he faced a much larger rebellion over his 2006 education reforms, in the Commons, May can only count on the DUP, a single UKIP MP and hope that the SNP see this as a solely English matter.

Even if the government passes all its legislative hurdles, the likelihood is that the ‘dash’ for grammars, as the Sunday Times had it at the weekend, will be confined to existing grammar school areas. In reality, the number of grammar school pupils has steadily increased from 129,000 to 163,000 since 1997, or from 4.0 to 5.2% of all pupils. Adding new school buildings in those areas, without pretending they are satellite schools, and a few within their catchments in outer London, will hardly match the rhetoric of recent days. There is not much evidence of demand elsewhere.

Interestingly, within the hastily produced ‘Green Paper’ this week, there was one idea[iii] that could allow a practical way forward for highly able pupils – organising support hubs for the highly able within multi-academy trusts, composed of comprehensive schools. MATs already pool resources for A-level classes, and such a model could offer a way to boost support for able students without selection at 11 and with all the flexibility that a MAT offers.

Either way, it is important that the Government doesn’t lose sight of the needs of the highly able in comprehensives. Becky Allen’s Missing Talent research for the Trust is widely quoted by ministers, and shows that between the ages of 11 and 16, a third of working class boys who are in the top tenth at Key Stage 2 are outside the top quarter by the time they get to do their GCSEs. As the selection debate grips Westminster and Whitehall, no legislation is required to ensure they get a fair deal, just action in the name of social mobility.

[i] See pages 218-219; [ii] See page 38; [iii] See page 27

Grammar schools must give poorer children a fair chance

I wrote this piece arguing that grammar schools must do more for social mobility, for the Guardian's Comment is Free.

Around half of England's 164 grammar schools plan to prioritise bright pupils from poorer families in their admissions policies. They have provoked a predictable backlash from some who see this as social engineering.

Yet the heads are right to embrace fairer admissions. And even those who would prefer all schools to be comprehensive should welcome these measures. Indeed, it is crucial that the grammars go further if they are going to play a stronger role in supporting social mobility.

Research for the Sutton Trust has shown that the number of grammar school pupils who come from outside the state sector – largely fee-paying preparatory schools – is more than four times the number eligible for free school meals. Only 6% of pupils in England go to prep schools, whereas 16% are entitled to free meals – but just 600 of the 22,000 children entering grammar schools between 2009 and 2011 were from these least advantaged homes, whereas 2,800 had been privately educated.

Of course grammar schools are selective, and many children from poorer homes have already fallen behind their better-off peers by age 11. That gap needs narrowing. Yet when our researchers looked at all pupils reaching the expected standard for a 14-year-old in the end-of-primary English and maths tests, they found that only 40% of able free-school-meal pupils gained admission to grammars, compared with 66% of other pupils.

Nor is it just poor pupils losing out. The research showed that the higher your family's income, the greater your chance of being admitted to a grammar. There is a good reason for this: parents who can afford it pay to make sure their children pass the test. For the richest parents, it will be £9,000-a-year prep school fees. For others, it will be £20 an hour or more for a private tutor. For many, these sums are more than they can afford.

That's why fairer admissions in grammar schools, far from giving less privileged pupils an unfair advantage, would simply help level the playing field. But while this is a welcome first step, more needs to be done. Admissions policies are only one part of the equation.

Grammar schools should reach out to a wider group of schools and pupils if the link between income and access is to be broken, while all primary schools in selective areas should encourage their bright pupils to apply in the first place. Admissions tests should reduce any bias that could disadvantage pupils from under-represented backgrounds.

To their credit, many grammar schools are acting here too: the Sutton Trust is working with the King Edward VI foundation in Birmingham and others to improve outreach programmes, while many schools are switching to less coachable tests.

Grammar school heads say they want to end the tutoring culture. But, with a quarter of pupils receiving private tuition, that may be wishful thinking. That's why grammar applicants should be entitled to free sessions to help familiarise them with the test, so those from low-income families don't lose out.

Critics will say that we should abolish rather than ameliorate selection. But the reality is that no major political party will scrap the remaining grammars without a groundswell of parental support: in this respect, the coalition parties and Labour are at one. So where grammars remain, it is vital that they do more to open their doors to bright children from low- and middle-income homes.

Others will say that we should focus instead on social selection in comprehensives or fee-paying independent schools. We also want to see independent day schools opened up on the basis of merit rather than money.

But grammar schools still educate one in 20 secondary pupils, and many have a good record in getting their students into our best universities. So it is crucial that they are open to bright children of all backgrounds.

Are grammar schools really on the rise again?

There was much excitement last week as Kent County Council gave the go ahead for a new 'satellite' grammar school in Sevenoaks. Supporters of grammar schools could hardly contain themselves. Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph hailed the dawn of a new era

Crosland’s ambition was never fully realised. Like the Celtic tribes that resisted Roman occupation, or the handful of monasteries that survived the dissolution, 164 grammars remain as an affront to the new order of enforced egalitarianism. And, glory be, for the first time in 50 years there may soon be a new one.

Meanwhile, opponents of grammar schools believe that the Sevenoaks move was enough to suggest that Ed Miliband and Stephen Twigg should launch all-out war on the system through their academy funding agreements. Fiona Millar in the Guardian today fulminated at Michael Gove's 'sneakiness'. 

Now the coalition's devious use of the school admissions code – introduced by Labour to bring more fairness to the system – will allow popular schools to expand without constraint or consultation. Plans for annexes to existing grammar schools have quickly surfaced and there is little to stop these "satellites" popping up all over the country. Belief in an elite education system runs like a deep blue vein through the Conservative party...... This sneaky last-minute change to the admissions code, made after consultation had closed, shows how superficial Cameron's Tory modernisation really is.

In truth, no last minute change to the admissions code was needed to allow an existing grammar school to expand. In fact, under Labour, the number of students in grammar schools increased by nearly 30,000 from 128,000 to 158,000 between 1997-2010, because it was never the Government's intention to prevent existing grammar schools from expanding. Rather the policy (underpinned by 2008 regulations) was to stop new grammars being established while insisting on parental ballots where there was a desire to end existing selection in a school or an area.

In reality, evidence in this whole debate is too often dependent on prejudice. Grammar schools score highly in league tables because they have a strong intake. A fair comparison would be with the top 25% of students in comprehensive schools, not their whole intake. And in those circumstances, the results prove pretty similar.

Where today's grammar schools score particularly poorly is on social mobility. Professor David Jesson has shown that it is a myth that grammars are true agents of social mobility: only 2% of their students are eligible for free school meals, well below the 15% national average when he did his calculations. His conclusion is that:

Out of an annual national cohort of 22,000 pupils entering Grammar schools, well under 500 of these are from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds. If these schools did offer ‘a ladder of opportunity’ to pupils in their areas we might have expected well over 2500 in this category.

This is undoubtedly a problem in wholly selective areas like Kent where poorly performing secondary moderns find it harder to compete, and where there have been a higher than average number of failing schools as a result. At the same time, since it is a wholly selective system in the county, parents whose children pass the 11+ will prefer a local to a distant grammar school, and it is hard logically to argue that those who bus children to selective schools in the county must continue to do so.

Yet the political reality for both Labour and the Conservatives is that they are neither going to abolish existing selection nor actively encourage new grammar schools. Despite the arguments of opponents of grammars there is no more evidence that Kent parents want to scrap selection than there is that people in other parts of the country want to re-introduce a system of grammars and secondary moderns. Indeed, the only time recently that parents were balloted on selection, in Ripon, they voted to keep it.


This is why it would be a wholly bad idea politically for Labour to promise a war on selection. The party has to win back seats in places like Kent to form a government, not alienate potential Labour voters. Gove is in a rather trickier position. He is far more interested in promoting new academies than he is in seeing new grammar schools, but he has a strong pro-grammar lobby in his party. Indeed, the Leader of Kent Council Paul Carter, who has backed the Sevenoaks developments, has been an opponent of Gove on academies, and there is no love lost between the two men.

However, Gove does need to be much clearer on the circumstances where he will and will not approve central funding and academy funding agreements for 'satellite' grammar schools. If he isn't, he will cause much bigger problems for his academy and free school programmes. Here, as elsewhere, the 'detoxified' Tory brand is in danger of re-toxifying.

The Sevenoaks developments could derail the education policies of both major parties if they listen to too many siren voices in this debate.

When a grammar school fails...

I have never been an enthusiast for closing the 164 remaining grammar schools. Apart from anything else, it seemed a foolish distraction from the wider goal of raising standards in Labour's first term, and the balloting arrangements introduced in 1998 hardly suggested a groundswell of popular support. The only ballot to date - in Ripon - confirmed the status quo. Indeed, there is a lot to be said for the sort of partnerships now being developed with grammar schools which are improving choice and results for other schools.

But there is something quite extraordinary about the blind faith of some in grammars, as caricatured by a piece in today's Daily Mail about Ofsted placing Stretford Grammar School in Trafford into special measures. "Grammar school with a 96% GCSE pass rate branded a failure by Ofsted. Why? Its race policy is out of date," thunders the Mail in my print edition, managing to work two hobby horses into a single headline.

Yet in a selective grammar school, every pupil ought to achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths, and a lot more besides. Any proper comparison must be with other grammars, not with non-selective schools.

And, here are the reasons why the school was really failed, according to the Ofsted report:

* The overall effectiveness of the school has declined since the last inspection and is now inadequate.
* Girls and higher ability students make insufficient progress. Mathematics and science subjects are weak in Key Stage 4. Too many students fail to attain the very highest grades they are capable of in their GCSE examinations.
* Too much teaching remains lacklustre and is not good enough to ensure that all students achieve as well as they should. A decline in the standard of students' behaviour in lessons is a consequence of teaching that fails to challenge, extend and inspire.
* Leadership and management are inadequate. Governance is inadequate (and there is then a brief mention of the equalities policies)
* The school's specialist science status has not had sufficient impact on raising students' achievement, improving the quality of teaching and learning or enhancing the curriculum.

There are many grammar schools that are stretching their able students and teaching exciting lessons. This is clearly not one of them. To pretend that any school that fails on so many counts is not failing merely because of its iconic status or because of political correctness is quite extraordinary.

Indeed, in other circumstances, a person uttering such tosh would be subjected to the full Why Oh Why? treatment ......in the Mail.

This post was picked up by John Rentoul.

Fairness and logic in school admissions

School admissions is one of those issues where logic flies out the window. It is inherently political, and those who shout that lotteries are 'unfair' or demand the immediate closure of grammar schools should realise that. This is why I worked with David Blunkett to develop the balloting system which has meant that local authorities cannot close grammar schools, but that if there is genuinely strong local demand, a referendum on selection can be held. Opponents of grammars denounce the arrangements as unfair: what they mean is that, with the exception of Ripon where they were defeated, there has not been such demand. Yet the Tory press - especially the Daily Telegraph - works itself into a lather every now and then to suggest that the end of the grammar school is nigh. It does so again today. Things were particularly daft when the balloting rules were first published; I always thought such hysteria suggested that the paper knew rather less about parents' views than they confidently proclaimed in their leader columns. So, there is now a broad consensus between the parties that existing grammars will stay (internally their pupil vnumbers can and d0 expand) but no new ones are likely to be built.

The real debate is then about how best to admit pupils to the remaining 3000 secondary schools. David Cameron apparently supports lying and cheating in order to get into faith schools, or at least declines to disapprove of such actions. But most people want to see a system that it transparent and fair. The new admissions code is much better in this regard than earlier guidance or rules - and, incidentally, by refusing to allow schools to put first preference first, it offers a level playing field in areas with popular comprehensives and grammars. Essentially, once children in care are given places, schools can use distance or sibling to allocate places; faith schools can use adherence to religion; and schools can use banding or random allocation (aka lotteries). There should be no doubt that the fairest system, and that most likely to give all parents the best chance of getting a place in a good school, is either of the latter two methods.

The issue, then, is to what extent such methods are used: schools tend to apply some distance criteria, perhaps allocating places to those very near the school before introducing random methods; they may also keep places for siblings. Small towns are rural areas are likely to want to stick to distance and sibling, for practical reasons. But the idea that it is 'fairer' to allocate all places according to distance from school is absurd; how can selection by house price be a fair system? Of course, two other things are needed to ensure that all parents understand that they can apply for randomly allocated places: the government should do more to introduce independent choice advisers, as envisaged in the 2005 Schools White Paper (too many of them are council functionaries rather than community advocates) and to improve school buses (the 2006 Act gives poorer families the legal right to select any one of three schools within a two-six mile radius from this September, rather than settling as before for the one allocated to them by the council for transport purposes). Now, it is true that Brighton was not the best advertisement for random allocation, at least in its presentation if not its application; but a growing number of schools are showing not only that it can be done, but when they are hugely oversubscribed, it must be done.

Stoke and standards

St Joseph's College in Stoke-on-Trent is up in arms because of plans by the local authority - whose education and children's services functions were so bad that the government forced the council to outsource them to Serco - to shut the college as part of a planned reorganisation which will see the number of secondary schools in the authority cut from 17 to 12. Now, there is undoubtedly a good case for cutting the schools and replacing a number of them with Academies, through the Building Schools for the Future programme. But one has to wonder whose daft idea it was to threaten St Joseph's in the process. Interestingly, it is not a diocesan school - and the head is clear that the local Catholic archdiocese has said it already has enough capacity with two other Catholic schools in the area. But with a value-added score (for some reason ignored on the school's own website) above average and a rating of 'good with outstanding features' by Ofsted, this school could be a lead partner in any imaginative BSF arrangement. The council should be careful not to allow ideological objections to the school's grammar status to outweight the potential for a deal that would benefit far more Stoke pupils. After all, they clearly need all the help they can get to raise standards.

Grappling with grammars

Grammar school policy has been a headache for both main parties. This year, the Tories came unstuck trying to ditch support for more selection, while explaining what would happen in selective areas if demographic change required new grammar schools to maintain an existing balance. Twelve years ago, Labour was determined to avoid its entire education policy being hijacked by the grammar school issue, which is why in the 1995 policy statement Diversity and Excellence, the party made clear that it would not allow local authorities to close grammar schools; instead it would be a matter for parents through local ballots. To quote the 1995 document for the benefit of younger BBC online hacks: "...while we have never supported grammar schools in their exclusion of children by examination, change can only come through local agreement. Such change in the character of the school would only follow a clear demonstration of support from the parents affected by such decisions."

As it happened, the then shadow education secretary David Blunkett, battling Roy Hattersley over grant-maintained schools, used the 'read my lips: no selection either by examination or interview, under a Labour government' phrase in his speech which helped secure the passage of the new policy on grammar schools. Blunkett made clear - as did I - to any interviewers and journalists that he was referring to new selection. And crucially - although this is never reported - he made it clear in his 1996 conference speech a year before the general election.

The policy was firmed up ahead of the 1997 Wirral South by-election, where the issue threatened to prevent Labour's candidate Ben Chapman from winning a victory. Newspapers were briefed that ballots would only happen when a fifth of parents petitioned for one (see, for example, The Times 7 Feb 1997). Further details, including that the parents would be those from feeder schools, were also provided. In government, those rules were enshrined in law, and only one ballot - at Ripon - has ever taken place, where parents opted to keep the existing selective system. (This, incidentally, was a position backed by the main local modern school which has since improved significantly in partnership with the grammar). There were occasional flurries in the media on the issue and fanciful suggestions that the government was trying to destroy good grammar schools. But ministers knew that there was no point opening up such a divisive issue unless there was a real groundswell of opinion in favour. As ministers look at the rules for ballots again, I hope they remember the history of all this. This is not a vote-winner: it could be a real vote-loser. Far better to build on the idea of grammar school partnerships and leave the existing ballot procedures to be used when there is a genuine groundswell of opinion for change.

Deja vu for Dave

Ben Brogan has some worrying news for David Cameron: Graham Brady, who helped spark the grammar schools fiasco for the Tories earlier in the summer, will be speaking at a fringe meeting in support of grammars at the party conference. What was the policy again? No new grammars, except where there are existing grammars (maybe). That's clear, then.