Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence

Memorandum submitted by Mr Martin Frey, STEP (SA 8)

INTRODUCTION

  STEP has campaigned since 1997 to Stop the Eleven Plus, grammar school selection in Kent.

  Government policy on selection and admissions affects us directly through the Grammar School Ballot Regulations and indirectly through government toleration of the adverse effects of selection on children and the communities of Kent.

SUBMISSION

  1.  Of Kent's 102 secondary schools, 33 are grammar schools taking around 27% of all pupils transferring to secondary school each year.

  2.  Issues surrounding selection absorb thousands of man-hours each year:

—  Primary schools counsel parents, coach children, attend marking and appeals panels. KS2 results are poor. Parental pressure on primary staff has led to cheating in SATS and the 11+.

—  Ongoing disputes have delayed settlement of admissions procedures since 2001, involving secondary governors, headteachers, LEA members and officers in bitter conflicts.

  3.  Ofsted confirm that Kent has well above average levels of serious weakness and the research of Professor Jesson indicates that many of our grammar schools are under performing.

  4.  Admissions determine school performance and can all but overwhelm the influence and effort of individual schools. The government and Kent LEA both stress choice and diversity. Kent has the greatest diversity of school performance in England. The difference in pass rates (five or more A*-C GCSE passes, 2002) between the lowest and highest performing schools is over 95%. (Note A)

  5.  We do not imply that top scorers are good schools, or that the weaker are bad, but selection creates a fog through which no one can see clearly. Would you send your child to a school where only 1 in 5 pupils get good GCSEs? Or how about just 1 in 25? In this fog, parental preference is all too often an expression of avoidance, not choice. Real choice comes when acceptable alternatives are on offer: a greengrocer does not widen choice by stocking rotten apples.

  6.  The government pays substantial grants to LEAs with weaker schools (schools with pass rates less than half the national average for five good GCSEs). As weaker schools are a side effect of selection, a high proportion of these grants go to selective LEAs. By concentrating on performance and ignoring structure, the government is subsidising the self-inflicted wounds of selective LEAs. (Note B)

  7.  We had looked to the government in 1997 to complete the job so forcefully carried out by Mrs Thatcher in the 70's, but left unfinished. What we got were the Grammar School Ballot Regulations. These are unworkable. (Note C)

  8.  We do not believe there was ever any intention that the regulations could produce change. The National Grammar School Association say they were told in 1998-99 that the regulations were designed to maintain the status quo. (Note D) Minor tinkering in 2000 made the regulations even worse—and we are promised more tinkering soon but have absolutely no expectations of a workable system emerging.

  9.  The Electoral Reform Society has not been able to prepare the key document, the electoral register, in time for it to be of any use in either of the last two years. Without the register no petition can be verified and no ballot can be held. These regulations guide us through the looking glass into a wonderland of absurdity.

  10.  The Government condemns the 11+ as harmful to the development of a significant proportion of young people, yet places the entire responsibility for the future of grammar school selection onto the shoulders of campaigners, largely drawn from busy parents with young children. Ending the 11+ is government business.

  11.  While the Government hides behind absurd regulations, the consequences for campaigners have, all too often, been intimidation and threat. These tend to fall on people when work and family commitments give them little spare time and when they may be particularly vulnerable to retaliation. (Note E)

  12.  Deep cynicism has been the main result. Government slogans like "bog standard comprehensives" or the "end of the comprehensive era" always seem to come at critical moments in our campaign. It has been hard, at times impossible, to avoid concluding that this government is actually rather fond of selection.

  13.  Beyond the Ballot Regulations, government policy has been focussed on the single criterion of school performance and confined to data from the performance tables and to Performance and Assessment data from Ofsted PANDA. The effects on post school performance, community schooling, school transport, social inequity, etc, have all been ignored.

  14.  No attention has been paid to diversity of performance. (Note A) No attention has been paid to the consequences of high concentrations of children entitled to free meals or with special needs in the secondary moderns. In Kent's grammar schools 1 child in every 450 on roll has a statement, in the secondary moderns 1 in 24 (data from performance tables, 2002). In Kent's grammar schools 1 child in 40 is entitled to a free school meal, in our secondary moderns, 1 in 4 (data from Performance Tables, 2000 and Note F). We do not believe these disparities arise solely from lack of ability among those with statements or entitled to free meals. There is something seriously wrong with an admission process that causes almost half our secondary moderns to have more than 1/3rd of their roll registered or statemented with special needs. These are not "mainstream schools" in any normal use of the term. (Data from Performance Tables, 2002)

  15.  No attention has been given to the growing body of data that indicates post school performance from "hot house" schooling, in both grammar and independent schools, does not live up to it's promise. (Note G)

  16.  The Learning and Skills Council has surveyed levels of qualification among the workforce. Kent & Medway have by far the lowest proportion of graduates in the South East region, startling in a system designed for high fliers. (Note H)

  17.  In "The Voice of the Learner" the LSC surveyed the experience and attitudes of learners, the recipients of selective education. They found evidence of discouragement and disillusion with education consequent on 11+ results and also of racial discrimination inherent in the selective process. (Note I)

  Both these LSC papers have met with a resounding silence from Kent LEA and the DfES.

  18.  We welcome that the last Education Act 2002 ensured that parents must express their preferences before the results of selection procedures are known, confirming the decisions of the Adjudicator for Schools has made in Kent and elsewhere.

  19.  With some significant reservations, Kent schools have welcomed co-ordinated admissions:

—  Kent is the largest LEA and, with a large number of Foundation and Aided schools and the 11+, one of the most complex and divisive, so it is strange that the LEA has rushed into the process early and made us the guinea pig.

—  Despite strenuous efforts schools have been unable to anticipate how a co-ordinated scheme would be arrived at so much effort has been spent and much wasted. As we write we do not know the actual scheme that will be imposed.

—  Despite Kent's complexity, parents have in the past known which school their child had been allocated before Christmas. A co-ordinated scheme will not allow parents to know their child's school until 1 March. This delay will also delay the start of the appeal season and may increase the number of cases that are still unsettled by September. Primary to secondary transition preparation will be severely hampered.

—  The LEA will be handling all communication with parents. Most Foundation and Aided schools, accustomed to handling this part of the process themselves, regard it as a vital part of establishing a good relationship with parents at the earliest opportunity. They do not trust the LEA to handle this with sufficient sensitivity and have doubts that the LEA can handle such a mass of data with sufficient accuracy.

—  The LEA is attempting to use co-ordinated admissions to overturn past decisions made by the Adjudicator for Schools, and the outcome of this attempt is not known at the time of writing. In particular the LEA wishes to overturn an admissions criterion known as "conditionality" and used by many Foundation and Aided schools.

  20.  While Kent is a fully selective system, it also has a number of very successful comprehensives. It is impossible to maintain comprehensives alongside selectives without some degree of separation. If parents were able to decide whether they preferred the selective system or the comprehensive system after their children had passed or failed the 11+, the separation would break down and Kent's comprehensives would become secondary moderns. (see paragraph 18, above)

  21.  With some separation the grammar/secondary modern system can work in parallel with the comprehensives. Without separation we will have a three-tier system: grammars and two tiers of secondary moderns, a retrograde step for the comprehensives and a disaster for the lowest tier.

  22.  Conditionality is the separation mechanism that works best. It is a criterion that gives admission priority to families that have not entered their child into the 11+ procedures. Conditionality means families must choose between the two systems. If they opt for the 11+, the test will do what it is intended to do, decide whether a child goes to grammar or secondary modern.

  23.  With conditionality, those that fail the tests are unlikely to get comprehensive places. Without conditionality, those that fail will have an undiminished chance of a comprehensive place, often at the expense of those whose unconditional first preference was for that comprehensive place. Without conditionality comprehensives would become secondary moderns in all but name.

  24.  Kent LEA has objected to the Adjudicator for Schools in each of the last three years. This year's adjudication process has an added complication as the Secretary of State has not yet imposed a co-ordinated admission scheme and the linkage between this imposition and the adjudication processes has not been understood by schools or the LEA and, very probably, not by the DfES either. Schools have known what is going to happen when it happens and not before. The outcome is, as yet, unknown.

  25.  If the adjudicator upholds the LEA's objections to conditionality, there will be a significant increase in the number of secondary modern schools and this government will have presided over a very significant increase in selection.

  26.  The environmental impact of school transport is a new issue in Kent. Responding to the Secretary of State's draft co-ordinated admission scheme, the LEA complains that, under the draft scheme, governors of Foundation and Voluntary Aided non-selective schools may give insufficient attention to environmental issues associated with home to school transport. They lay no such stricture on grammar schools. In 2000 Kent's Director of Education estimated that selection increased the cost of home to school transport by 45% (KCC Education Committee papers, 10 February 2000). This extra cost impacts directly on pollution and congestion. We live in hope that the Government will take note of such issues and register that there is more at stake with selective education than examination data.

  27.  We believe that choice and diversity in secondary schooling is desirable—but that a great danger results when the main product of choice is a rigid hierarchy of schools. Rigid hierarchies are the inevitable outcome of selective admissions. The main losers in hierarchical systems are precisely that group of 25% or so who gain too little from school, a group that shows up very clearly in the PISA studies of the OECD. It is children in this group that have fared badly in this year's GCSEs. While we have much to celebrate in English education, this group highlight our major problem: it is what stands between us and a world-class education system, second to none.

  28.  Admissions are at the heart of Kent's problems. Co-ordinated admissions are a long stride in the right direction, selection a great leap backwards.

NOTE A

THE 20 LEAs WITH THE LARGEST AVERAGE PASS RATE DIFFERENCES

(Pass rates from Performance Tables, 5 or more A*-C passes, GCSE 2002)

	LEA	Schools GrammarAll		Pass Rate Lowest	Pass Rate Highest	Difference (Highest-Lowest)
1	Kent	33	102	4.7%	100.0%	95.3%
2	Slough	4	11	5.1%	99.8%	94.8%
3	Calderdale	2	15	7.0%	99.7%	92.7%
4	Northants	—	39	6.7%	98.0%	91.3%
5	Birmingham	8	76	12.0%	100.0%	88.0%
6	Essex	4	78	13.0%	100.0%	87.0%
7	Medway	6	19	13.0%	100.0%	87.0%
8	Wolverhampton	1	18	14.0%	99.9%	86.0%
9	Lancs	4	88	14.9%	100.0%	85.1%
10	Lincs	15	63	15.0%	100.0%	85.0%
11	Plymouth	3	17	15.0%	100.0%	85.0%
12	Walsall	2	20	14.0%	99.0%	85.0%
13	Liverpool	1	32	14.0%	98.8%	84.8%
14	Reading	2	7	15.9%	100.0%	84.1%
15	Southend	4	12	17.0%	100.0%	83.0%
16	Havering	—	18	16.7%	99.0%	82.3%
17	Herts	—	77	17.0%	98.0%	81.0%
18	Bucks	13	34	20.0%	100.0%	80.0%
19	Bradford	—	27	14.3%	94.0%	79.7%
20	Wirral	6	22	20.0%	99.7%	79.7%
	Total, Average all LEAs	164	3,171	21.1%	80.1%	59.5%

—  These 20 LEAS have 66% of England's grammar schools, but only 24% of all schools. Many are areas of high prosperity/low deprivation yet all bar two manage to maintain schools with results worse than any school in Hackney.

—  Does a school where all children get good GCSEs make up for the fact that many families are compelled to send their children to a school where only 1 in 5 (or even 1 in 25) do so?

—  If the average pass rate for two school is 50%, is it better to have one on 95%, the other on 5%, or is it better when one is on say 55%, the other 45%? We prefer the latter. Parents have choice between clearly acceptable alternatives. Overall, staff morale improves and both schools have headroom for improvement.

—  Herts (the Government's preferred "model" for admissions, an LEA with even more adjudications than Kent) has no grammars, but a lot of partial selection.

NOTE B

  Derived from DfEE table of totals allocated to weaker schools Jan 2001.

—  "Weaker"=less than half national average pass rate for 5 A*-C GCSEs.

—  Total £s/total secondry roll (11-15) gives average £s/pupil for each LEA, used to derive LEA rank order. (Money actually goes to the weaker schools only.)

LEAs—All Selective

—Partially Selective

—All

COMPREHENSIVE

Rank £/pupil	LEA	Total £s	£s per pupil	5A* -C Pass rate, 2002	Also in Note A?
1	Thurrock	375,000	47.08	47.6
2	Reading	240,000	37.72	45.2	Y
3	Lincolnshire	1,620,000	37.72	55.3	Y
4	Southwark	340,000	31.42	37.0
5	Nottingham City	425,000	29.34	32.2
6	Medway Towns	560,000	28.79	49.7	Y
7	Southampton	330,000	27.56	44.0
8	Walsall	560,000	26.54	43.0	Y
9	Slough	180,000	23.46	51.6	Y
10	Swindon	260,000	23.13	48.2
11	Derby	345,000	22.44	53.6
12	Telford & Wrekin	235,000	20.92	51.0
13	Hackney	160,000	20.51	32.5
14	Tower Hamlets	280,000	20.18	44.4
15	Kent	1,740,000	19.37	55.1	Y
67	Bucks	350,000	10.68	65.9	Y
133	Surrey	145,000	2.66	60.0
134	Cornwall	75,000	2.39	54.3
135	West Berkshire	25,000	2.18	58.3
136	Bath & NE Somerset	25,000	2.08	60.0
137	North Somerset	25,000	2.07	54.0
138	Redcar and Cleveland	20,000	1.93	49.2
139	Hounslow	20,000	1.24	50.6
140	Bromley	25,000	1.22	61.0
141	Redbridge	20,000	1.07	64.4
142	Kensington & Chelsea	0	0.00	56.6
143	North Tyneside	0	0.00	49.0
144	Isles of Scilly	0	0.00	63.0
145	Rutland	0	0.00	61.0
146	Bracknell Forest	0	0.00	45.9
147	Wokingham	0	0.00	63.8
148	Shropshire	0	0.00	58.9
	TOTAL/AVG	33,075,000	11.03	50.5

NOTE C

  29.  The regulations require a petition "signed" by 20% of eligible parents. To be eligible parents must have a child under 16. They must be resident in the LEA, or have a child at school in the LEA. Why is selective education of interest only to parents of children under 16? Why exclude parents who have experienced the system in its entirety, yet include some with no experience at all? Employers, young adults, grandparents—all are excluded. In partially selective areas those who have recent experience of secondary education may be entirely excluded (eligibility is confined to primary schools). Do we need passports or a 10-euro note in our pocket to be eligible for a Euro election? Come to that, do we need a petition before a Euro election can be held? And if such a petition had a threshold of 20% of eligible voters, would we ever have another Euro election?

  30.  In Kent the 20% target of validated signatures needed in 2002-03 for a petition to succeed was 48,616 parents (an increase of 2,656—5.8% since 1999-2000). We found this out on 25 July (all school terms had ended by 23 July). It has taken the Electoral Reform Society nine months to compile the register and announce the target figure. If we succeeded in gathering a valid petition by the end of June, preparation for the ballot and holding the ballot itself could not be completed by 31 July. The petition it would have to be re-validated by a brand new register complied from September, reflecting changes to school rolls.

  31.  Under a new register the valid petition would probably be declared invalid. The target number is increasing as Kent's population rises. About 4,000 signatures may no longer be valid because their children had passed 16. Another 4,000 may be invalid because their children may have changed school at 11. We would be given the opportunity to "top up" the petition in the autumn term—and can only hope that this process can be completed well before the end of that term or . . . yet another new register will be required . . .

  32.  This process is flawed at its foundation and unworkable in Kent.

  33.  The petition itself requires not just a signature but also the name and full address of each petitioner, the name of their child and the child's school. Common sense prevents many potential signatories from handing such potentially dangerous information to strangers.

  34.  Parents with children under 16 but not at school must register with the Electoral Reform Society by sending a birth certificate and a utilities bill if they wish to sign a petition or vote . . .

  35.  If a form is filled in by just one person it is automatically invalid—there must be details of at least two people on each petition form . . .

  36.  These procedures are fundamentally flawed, the details ridiculous. The thought that the Grammar School Ballot Regulations were designed to preserve the status quo is inescapable. (Note D)

NOTE D

  37.  Extracted from a Memo To All employees & Governors of Highsted Grammar School, from: JEHL, date: 10.9.99, subject: The campaign against Grammar Schools.

  38.  I have today received a letter from the Electoral Reform Ballot Service informing us that they have received an indication that a petition is to he sought for a ballot regarding the future of Grammar Schools in Kent.

  39.  We are therefore required to submit a full list of all eligible parents with current addresses including postal codes. I have written to ERBS to say that our records for this year will not be fully up to date until about 25 September leaving us insufficient time to submit all the details they require by 29 September. This is quite genuine!

  40.  As you will be aware only parents of school age children are permitted to vote, therefore none of our Senior School parents will be eligible.

  41.  However, there is no need to panic as yet, since Kent Grammar Schools are to be "petitioned and voted about" as a block. This will require the signatures of about 80,000 petitioners though we cannot guarantee that all inclusions will be genuine, it is nevertheless a vast undertaking and will not be lightly achieved. The Grammar Schools' Association has been given to understand that the procedure has been made as difficult as possible in order to try to maintain the status quo.

  (memo continues—entire text available if needed).

NOTE E

  42.  The consequences of campaigning can be severe. For example:

a. Under a long standing agreement a secondary modern school used the games field of an adjacent grammar school for sports day. That agreement was unilaterally broken two days before sports day in July 2003 when the management of the grammar school discovered that a prominent member of the STEP campaign had once been a governor of the secondary modern.

b. The direct victims of this retaliation were schoolchildren—but this is not an easy load for any campaigner to bear, least of all a parent with children in local schools, children who may themselves be singled out for similar vindictive retaliations.

  43.  Much is made of inter-school co-operation and Kent's Director of Education is at the forefront of such initiatives. Incidents like this make a mockery of any idea of community and co-operation within a selective system.

NOTE F

Parliamentary Written Answer, Estelle Morris to David Chaytor, 1/11/2000, no 135541

	Selective Schools				Non-Selective Schools
LEA	% SEN statemented	% on FSM	% ethnic minorities	% SEN statemented	% on FSM	% ethnic minorities
Kent	0.1	2.4	4.5	3.6	14.3	3.2
Buckinghamshire	0.1	1.4	13.8	3.0	11.9	25.8
Lincs	0.2	1.9	3.0	3.9	11.3	1.0
Birmingham	0.2	5.1	36.7	1.8	36.1	42.5
Trafford	0.0	4.9	9.6	2.3	29.0	12.5
Wirral	0.1	5.4	2.1	3.0	34.4	1.1
Medway	0.2	3.7	9.9	4.1	13.8	4.7
Gloucestershire	0.2	2.1	6.3	2.6	8.8	2.8
Sutton	0.1	1.2	23.7	2.6	11.9	7.8
Bexley	0.1	3.8	10.0	2.5	16.0	11.1
Lancashire	0.2	3.0	5.8	3.9	16.4	7.0
Southend	0.1	2.8	7.3	1.5	19.7	3.7
Slough	0.2	5.1	51.8	4.6	25.5	53.1
Warwickshire	0.1	1.2	5.0	2.6	8.6	5.4
Essex	0.0	0.7	9.2	1.6	10.8	2.2
Torbay	0.1	4.7	1.6	2.8	19.7	1.1
Plymouth	0.2	3.8	2.8	2.1	17.2	1.4
Barnet	0.0	1.4	34.1	2.7	18.0	37.8
Bournemouth	0.0	2.3	3.2	2.9	14.0	2.1
North Yorkshire	0.0	1.5	2.9	2.4	7.2	1.0
Calderdale	0.3	1.9	5.6	2.9	18.7	11.8
Kingston	0.0	1.0	35.7	2.3	12.1	17.6
Poole	0.1	2.4	2.4	1.9	9.9	1.0
Bromley	0.1	1.2	16.5	3.0	13.1	10.0
Redbridge	0.1	2.9	48.0	1.4	17.6	48.2
Wiltshire	0.1	0.5	1.2	2.1	7.0	1.4
Reading	0.1	0.4	13.7	3.3	15.9	17.0
Walsall	0.0	2.7	27.0	2.8	18.7	17.5
Enfield	0.1	2.5	26.8	2.0	23.6	32.5
Kirklees	0.0	2.3	8.1	4.3	19.1	20.2
Telford & Wrekin	0.0	0.9	5.6	5.2	21.5	6.2
Liverpool	0.0	7.5	8.5	1.8	38.2	5.4
Cumbria	0.1	1.7	0.0	3.1	13.3	0.9
Devon	0.3	2.1	1.2	3.3	9.7	0.9
Wolverhampton	0.0	2.6	19.4	2.4	22.5	32.6
Stoke-on-Trent	0.0	1.1	5.1	3.2	25.7	7.6
From our direct experience, we estimate that a minimum of 10%, perhaps 20%, of children with statemented needs are of high ability. Grammar schools seem unwilling to make the adjustments necessary to cope with able children with special needs. (Ethnicity—see also Note I below).

NOTE G

  44.  From the Daily Mail, 26 October 1998 (also reported in other papers)

  45.  State students who overtake the privileged by Tony Halpin, Education Correspondent.

  46.  Students from comprehensive schools are far more likely to succeed at university than those from fee-paying independents, according to a study. They are 20% more likely to get a first class degree and are less likely to drop out of university. Academics who carried out the research said yesterday that they had been startled by the findings.

  47.  They said that universities should consider discriminating in favour of students from comprehensives—admitting them even if their A-level results were worse than those from independent schools.

  48.  Dr Bob McNabb, who led the study by Cardiff University's business school, said: "Kids who go to independent schools are more likely to get better A-level grades because of the resources that their schools are able to put into their education. But once they get into university, students with the same A-level grades who come from the comprehensives are likely to be more able than those from independent schools, possibly because of innate ability or because they are harder working or more motivated."

  49.  Dr McNabb said they had had a bigger struggle to get to university and appeared more determined to do well when they got there. "If everything else is constant, a comprehensive school student is 20% more likely to get a first class degree than the equivalent student from an independent school," he said. "They are also more likely to get a better class of degree generally."

  50.  The study looked at the results of all graduates of universities in England and Wales between 1973 and 1992. About 55% had been to comprehensives; a quarter to fee-paying schools and the rest came from grammar schools, sixth form colleges and by other routes. The students from comprehensives did better on average than those from all the other types of school.

  51.  Pupils from independent schools claim about half the places at Oxford and Cambridge each year, though they comprise only 20% of all sixth formers. The Government has been pressing the two universities to attract state school students. The study suggested that bright comprehensive students, particularly in inner city areas, were losing out because similar pupils from fee-paying schools were more likely to do well in A-level exams.

  52.  It urged universities, when offering places on the basis of A-level results, to consider asking for lower grades from sixth-formers in comprehensives to compensate for the disadvantages they faced at school. The study said: "The better degree performance obtained by those students who had been to comprehensive schools, compared with those who attended other types of school, for given A-level scores, supports a policy of positive discrimination in favour of the former in awarding university places."

  End of Daily Mail report. The research paper is available if needed.

  53.  STEP Comment: We welcome new University admissions policies that reflect the results of this research and other but regret that it has had no effect on government policy on grammar school selection.

NOTE H

  54.  From Kent & Medway LSC, April 2002—Strategic Context

  55.  In 2000 there was clear room for improvement in Kent and Medway's participation in structured learning post-16 (82%). Level 2 attainment by age 19 was just below the average for the South East but by this age, over 11% more had achieved Level 3 than in Kent and Medway. For adults locally the picture was similar: in 2000, 47% of adults in the South East had achieved Level 3 or higher, compared with 37% in Kent and Medway. In addition, as many as 20% of people aged 16-65 in Kent and Medway had basic skills needs. (Extract ends. Entire text available if needed.)

  56.  From Kent & Medway LSC, April 2002—Economic Context

  57.  Although in recent years Kent and Medway's economic performance has been relatively good in historical and national terms, it still lags significantly behind the rest of the South East. Our workforce is the least qualified and skilled in the region. A major issue is that the greatest growth in employment in the South East is forecast to require skills at Levels 4 and 5—the Levels where Kent and Medway is especially weak.

  58.  There are serious implications for people in or entering the local workforce, with lower levels of employability than elsewhere in the South East.

  (Extract ends. Entire text available if needed.)

  59.  STEP Comment: Combined with the evidence for lowered university performance.

  (Note G), this report is a long term indictment of Kent's selective system. It goes to the heart of the underlying ethos of grammar schooling and we are amazed that the Government position remains narrowly focussed on crude exam data.

NOTE I

  60.  Extract from LSC & Kent and Medway Learning Partnership joint paper, "The Voice of the Learner." The entire text available if needed. (NB the word "Comprehensive" is here used to mean any non-grammar school. The LSC regret the confusion in an LEA where most non-grammar schools are not comprehensive but secondary modern. It is a confusion shared by a many, probably most, parents. Untangling this confusion is one of our campaign's greatest challenges.)

  61.  From section 6.4.3.2 Selection at age 11

  62.  A clear message came through from several groups that the system of school selection at age 11 in Kent & Medway had a profound effect on young people. Those who did not manage to get into the grammar schools felt they had been classed as stupid and believed they were not given the same quality of teaching or level of support that the pupils at grammar schools were. On the other hand, some young people who had attended grammar schools were unimpressed, but instances of this were far fewer. Parents were very concerned if their children did not get into grammar school. They were very clear that young people who went to the grammar schools ended up aiming higher than those that went to the comprehensives. Those that go to the comprehensive, particularly if they had expected to go to a grammar school, have trouble settling and are de-motivated.

  (Extract ends)

  63.  From section 7.6 Effect of Selection at Age 11

  64.  Despite the view of some stakeholders that failing to get into a grammar school at age 11 did not affect the aspirations of young people, the research with young people, their carers and with representatives of BME (Black, Minority Ethnic) groups suggested strongly that young people who do not get into grammar schools develop lower aspirations than those who do and can become severely de-motivated and disaffected as a result. There is a stigma attached to the comprehensive schools and the expectation is that young people who go to them will achieve less. This is evidenced by the desperation of the parents of young people who only just fail to achieve a place to get the decision overturned.

  65.  Some BME communities perceive prejudice in the grammar school selection process. This highlights the need for the selection process to be transparent and for liaison with BME groups to address this perception.

  66.  Young people at both grammar and comprehensive schools told us that grammar schools provided more, and better quality, careers advice than did comprehensives and that the quality of teaching at comprehensives was lower than at grammars. Action should be taken to ensure that young people at both types of school have access to the same level and quality of advice and to ensure that they are aware that this is the case.

  (Extract ends)

  67.  STEP welcomes that Kent grammar schools admit 4.5% from ethnic minorities (Note F), but our ethnic minority population is very small by national and south east regional standards and is predominantly Indian, with Chinese the second largest group. The prejudice perceived by BME groups may nonetheless be real and may be particularly felt by ethnic groups than Indian and Chinese, two groups with a strong tradition of academic success.

Martin Frey

Step

September 2003

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Prepared 13 September 2004