Pupils caught in middle of drive to expand Kent’s grammar schools

Georgia Lane is 13. She’s hoping to do well at GCSE and would like to go to Cambridge to study law. She’s smart and ambitious, but she vividly remembers the day she found out she had failed her 11+. Georgia lives in Kent, where secondary schools are selective and in the runup to the general election have become a political battleground over controversial plans to expand the grammar system in the county.

Like thousands of Kent schoolchildren, Georgia sat what is known as the Kent test which results in 20% of pupils going to grammar school. “The whole process was very, very stressful,” she says. “I had lots and lots of tutoring and a lot of pressure on me to pass.

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The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, is expected to announce shortly whether plans for a new grammar school building in Sevenoaks – which has no grammar school at the moment – have been given the go-ahead.

Parents in Sevenoaks have long campaigned for a grammar school as their children have to travel to neighbouring towns, but under current legislation no new selective schools can be built.

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A Sutton Trust report in 2013 said grammar schools were monopolised by affluent pupils, with an average 2.7% of pupils eligible for free school meals, a position echoed by Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw who said grammars had failed to improve social mobility.

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