Earlier this week David Willetts sought your questions on grammar schools. We said at the time that ConservativeHome would pick ten of those questions and David Willetts supplied his answers to those questions yesterday afternoon. Our apologies to those questioners who we didn't choose. David's answers are published below...
"First of all, many thanks for the Tim Montgomerie for this opportunity to engage with these issues. It is a bit frustrating that these questions are all about grammar schools when this speech ranged very widely, but they do help explain what my speech was all about."
N: "You base your argument that grammar schools do not promote social mobility on statistics relating to the number of pupils entitled to free school meals. Do other indices of poverty corroborate this finding? 30% of the pupils at my former school are from the most deprived quintile. 50% of pupils are ethnic minorities, many of whom speak English as a foreign language. This might not be typical, I concede, but it is one example of a grammar school that does not entrench privilege."
"There has been some misunderstanding of the evidence on free school meal eligibility (FSM) and grammar schools. I cited evidence from the Sutton Trust (The Sutton Trust, 'Rates of Eligibility for Free School Meals at the Top State Schools', October 2005) that across the nation as a whole 14% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, whereas in areas where the grammar schools survive, the figure is 12%. However, only 2% of the grammar school children are eligible for free school meals. (Incidentally, these are figures for free meal eligibility, rather than claims).
Some of the children who are missing out in this way are of high-ability (measured in terms of their Key Stage 2 score). It is not merely that poor children are underrepresented at grammar schools, high ability children from poor families are underrepresented at grammar schools. A high ability FSM child has a 32% of passing the 11+ whereas a more affluent high ability child has a 60% chance. (A. Atkinson, P. Gregg, B. McConnell, 'The result of 11 plus selection; An investigation into opportunities and outcomes for pupils in selective LEAs', April 2006, Working Paper No. 06/150, CMPO).
I know that this is uncomfortable evidence, but we need to confront it. Some people have written to me to explain that they were from modest backgrounds and that they owe their achievements in life to grammar schools. I have no doubt that grammar schools truly helped those people. Grammar schools remain excellent schools for those people who get into them; this is why we are committed to keeping them. However, as society has changed so it has affected the diversity of experiences of childhood and made social selection more of a problem. Many of those people from poor backgrounds who got into grammar schools in previous decades would not do so now.
Going back to your question, you are correct both that the FSM eligibility is not a perfect indicator of poverty, and that there are many people who are not FSM-eligible who are - by any reasonable standards - poor. However, it is a useful short-hand proxy and the short answer to your question: "does other evidence corroborate the FSM findings" is "yes". The following quotation by one of our leading researchers in this field - Dr. Anna Vignoles from the Institute of Education - is a good summary of the evidence:
"There is a substantial body of evidence that suggest that children from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to access grammar schools, for a given level of ability. This results in children from wealthier backgrounds being disproportionately represented in grammar schools. Although most research on current data relies on using the somewhat limited Free School Meal measure as an indicator of the socio-economic background of the child, earlier studies that used rich information on parental income and/or social class, also find that children from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to be enrolled in grammar school than similarly able but less well off children."
(Cited with permission of the author).
Recent Comments