Grammar Schools
On the journey Nick Cohen is making to being Melanie Phillips, the necessary conversion to grammar schools was made long ago. Yet there remains a difference between Cohen's view and Phillips' view. Phillips believes in grammar schools because they give middle class children a better education. Cohen (usually, not all the time) believes that they will give poorer children a better education. In particular one of Cohen's favourite lines is to note that the comprehensive system is 'selection by house price', ie rich parents move to the catchment areas of good comprehensive schools (or good comprehensives schools are in the rich areas).The implication is that a system where 25% go to a grammar school and 75% to secondary moderns (where the distinction is made by an exam at age 11) would avoid this effect, and hence be better for poor children (I do not see how it would for the other 75%. Indeed given 75% of the richest 25% now have to send their child to a secondary modern one can easily see how it would exacerbate this problem).
There are three claims. First, that poorer intelligent pupils (or 'bright, poor, kids' as it is usually put) will get to the grammar schools, second that they will benefit enormously from the grammar schools and finally, that the others won't be disadvantaged. Opponents of grammar schools tend to think the first and third claims are wrong, and that grammar schools tend to essentially increase the advantages that middle-class kids already had.
The latest research has some interesting findings. There are three broad conclusions - first that very few 'poor' children go to grammar schools, even when they are academically good enough. Second, selective areas have marginally better exam performance all other things equal. Third this is because children who go to grammar schools do significantly better (than in a non-selective system), bought at the cost of children who do not doing slightly worse.
Taking the first point, they used as a proxy for 'poor' children eligible for free school meals (FSM). They found that "some 12% of pupils in non-grammar schools in these areas are entitled to free school meals (FSM), whereas in the grammar schools only 2% have FSM entitlement", and perhaps more damning, "Among FSM eligible children in selective LEAs just 5.8% attend grammar schools as opposed to 26.4% of other children".
Why do so fewer children from poor backgrounds attend grammar schools? First, because there education attainment at 11 is much less. But also for other factors - ony 32% of those in the highest attainment at Key Stage II (at test from age 9-11) attend grammar school compared with 60% of non-FSM children. So in short there are fewer poor, bright, kids than rich, bright, kids (where bright means ability in tests at age 9-11) and those poor, bright kids that there are don't get into grammar schools.
On the second point, they find that "selective LEAs raise attainment by 3.6 grade points, slightly less than equivalent to raising four GCSE grades from a ’C’ to a ‘B’". This 3.6 points is somewhat sensitive to certain schools entering pupuls for high numbers o GSCEs, capping these makes it 2.4 points (and adjusting for value-added makes it lower still). This is before adjusting for the differing characteristics of LEAs, such as FSM eligibility, special-needs, ESL, and ethnicity, and importantly, single sex schools . Once this is done the advantage of selective LEA is either zero if you take all the impact of single-sex schools to be because they are single sex, and 1 GSCE point if you assume there is some gain because they also tend to be selective.
Third, the reports finds that there are "large positive effects for the minority of pupils attending grammar schools and small negative effects for those not attending grammar schools in selective LEAs". For FSM pupils who do make it, "the gains to attending a grammar school are more substantive (around 7 to 8 grade points)"..."conversely, the majority of poor high ability pupils who are in non-grammar schools are disadvantaged by 1.3 grade points". However the benefits to grammars appear partly because there are less FSM children.
Basically then the Phillips' view is correct - grammars are about educating a middle-class elite. Grammar schools give 25% of children, preponderantly from middle-class families, a better education than the current system. This is bought at the cost of the other 75% getting a worse education. It is possible that the grammars' aggregate effect outweighs the secondary moderns, though it is marginal (and of course there is a marginal utility of education problem here - are two pupils with 5 GSCEs worse than one pupil with 11 and one with 0?). Poor children do very well if they get to grammars, but the vast majority don't (94.2% of those on FSM), even when they are intelligent enough (in terms of testing at 9-11), and overall the impact of grammars on poor children will be negative.
posted by Matthew @ 7/04/2006 07:25:00 AM
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