Grammar schools in England: a new analysis of social segregation and academic outcomes

Abstract

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Grammar schools in England: a new analysis of social segregation and academic outcomesStephen Gorard and Nadia Siddiqui school of Education, durham university, durham, uK ABSTRACTThe UK government is planning to increase the number of pupils attending state-funded selective grammar schools, claiming that this will assist overall standards, reduce the poverty attainment gap and so aid social mobility. Using the full 2015 cohort of pupils in England, this article shows how the pupils attending grammar schools are stratified in terms of chronic poverty, ethnicity, language, special educational needs and even precise age within their year group. This kind of clustering of relative advantage is potentially dangerous for society. The article derives measures of chronic poverty and local socioeconomic status segregation between schools, and uses these to show that the results from grammar schools are no better than expected, once these differences are accounted for. There is no evidence base for a policy of increasing selection, and so there are implications for early selection policies worldwide. The UK government should consider phasing the existing selective schools out.

School tracking and its role in social reproduction: reinforcing educational inheritance and the direct effects of social origin

“…In Germany, 69 per cent of the curriculum in primary and secondary education is tracked, whereas in the UK, only 15 per cent of the curriculum is tracked (see Online Appendix Table A1). The between‐country differences in tracking may be complemented by countries offering exceptions from the predominant form of schooling (e.g., the United Kingdom has 163 selective grammar schools that diverge from the majority non‐selective comprehensive school system (Gorard and Siddiqui, )). Moreover, countries with a more comprehensive school system may implement numerous subtler forms of student tracking (see, e.g., Blossfeld et al ).…”

“…Studies analysing differences between school types, however, came to the conclusion that grammar schools would not foster social mobility or benefit children from lower‐class backgrounds. On the contrary, the recommendation was to phase out existing selective schools, indicating the importance of evaluating the impact of educational systems and their characteristics (see, for example, Burgess, Dickson and Macmillan, ; Boliver and Swift, ; Gorard and Siddiqui, ).…”

How Do Academically Selective School Systems Affect Pupils’ Social-Emotional Competencies? New Evidence From the Millennium Cohort Study

“…It is no surprise then, that there has been a great deal of research examining how selective school systems affect educational achievement (e.g. Gorard & Siddiqui, 2018;Smith-Woolley et al, 2018). While examination results are no doubt important, recent research has drawn attention to competencies beyond academic achievement for determining pupil outcomes in later life (Brunello & Schlotter, 2011;Gutman & Schoon, 2013).…”

How can we evaluate the effectiveness of grammar schools in England? A regression discontinuity approach

“…One exception is Gorard and Siddiqui’s () study, which did not account for school‐level prior attainment, but still found no positive grammar school effect. They noticed that adding ‘whether a pupil went to a grammar school or not’ did not improve the fitness of the model for predicting capped GCSE results.…”

“…Therefore, the results have limited relevance to today's schools and are not discussed. Total GCSE/GNVQ points score, The probability of obtaining 5 or more A*-C GCSE/GNVQ Indicator of outcome Coefficients Effect of grammar schools 6 grades on total GCSE/GNVQ or 25% more likely to achieve 5 A*-C on GCSE/GNVQ Harris and Rose (2013 The probability of obtaining 5 or more A*-C GCSE Indicator of outcome Coefficients Effect of grammar schools 10% more likely to achieve 5 A*-C on GCSE/GNVQ Gorard and Siddiqui (2018) Area Effectiveness of grammar schools in England 361 non-selective schools using all of the cases in the 11+ file (including those with the same combination of baseline variables). Pupil records in the 11+ file are still matched to the NPD based on characteristics, KS2 attainment and school type.…”