Grammar schools announce plan to give priority to disadvantaged pupils

Guardian coverage by Richard Adams quotes the Sutton Trust’s James Turner in an article on grammar school plans to give priority to FSM pupils.

Grammar schools in England are looking to break the middle-class stranglehold on selective state education by offering to rewrite their admissions codes to discriminate in favour of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

More than half of England’s 164 existing grammar schools – the survivors of England’s comprehensive school reforms in the 1960s and 1970s – say they plan to revise their admissions criteria to give priority to qualifying children who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) or the pupil premium.

The move follows a chorus of complaints that grammar schools favour the better off due to their reliance on entrance examinations such as the eleven-plus to select pupils. The Sutton Trust has published research showing that just 2.7% of grammar schools’ places went to pupils eligible for FSM, compared with around 20% in state schools nationally.

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The Sutton Trust, which has campaigned for grammar schools to do more for children from low income and disadvantaged areas, said it was working with grammar school heads on tackling the issue.

“We welcome this announcement as an important step forward and hope it will help with some of the access issues we identified last year. However, admissions policies are just one part of the equation,” said James Turner, the trust’s director of programmes.

“It is vital that the tests are as unbiased as possible. Schools should also reach out to a wider group of schools and pupils if the link between income and access to grammar schools is to be narrowed.”

Read the full article here.