Greg Hurst: Terms of debate have changed

As Theresa May noted, people tend to “get lost in the argument” about whether grammar schools improved social mobility in their heyday of the 1950s and 1960s (Greg Hurst writes).

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Some Conservative counties such as Kent and Buckinghamshire defiantly kept their selective schools, others survived in clusters.

Anna Vignoles and David Jesson, professors at the universities of Cambridge and York, looked at the pupil profiles of current grammar schools for the Sutton Trust three years ago and they were very unrepresentative: 12.7 per cent had attended independent prep schools rather than state primary schools.

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Justine Greening, education secretary, has highlighted separate research from the Sutton Trust in 2008. Like other studies, it found grammar schools taught fewer poor children but those that did attend did better than poor bright pupils in all-ability schools.

Read the full article here. (£)