High-achieving disadvantaged students are far less likely to sit and pass entrance exams for selective schools
Barriers to accessing selective education develop long before the selection and assessment process begins, experts conclude
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Disadvantaged students are less likely than their more advantaged peers with similar attainment to sit and pass entrance exams for selective schools, and introducing an opt-out system for the tests would only deliver a small boost.
That’s according to a new major study published today in the peer-reviewed journal British Journal of Sociology of Education.
The results follow an analysis of population-level data from Kent, in England, where there is a high concentration of grammar schools.
Researchers Dr Binwei Lu, Professor Jake Anders, Dr Xin Shao, and Mrs Joanne Bartley, from Durham University, UCL, Zhejiang University, and St Paul’s School, examined two distinct stages of the selection process: whether pupils choose to sit the entrance test, and whether they go on to pass it.
Their results demonstrate that 67% of students classed as more advantaged (those not eligible for free school meals (FSM)) were able to take a test, compared to just 40% of pupils who did receive FSM.
This difference is not just about these pupils’ academic attainment: even among students with pupils who scored highly in their Key Stage 2 SATs, 84% of non-FSM pupils sat the 11+, compared to just 56% of FSM pupils. The disadvantaged students who do take the exam are also less likely to pass it than their more advantaged peers of similar attainment.
However, introducing an opt-out system for the tests or giving disadvantaged pupils extra marks, would only deliver a small boost to the representation of disadvantaged pupils. The researchers concluded these prominent policy reform proposals may fail to deal with the deeper issues of socioeconomic disadvantage in selective education.
Lead author Dr Binwei Lu (Zhejiang University and The Evidence Centre for Education, Durham University) said: “Even when pupils are academically capable, substantial barriers of awareness, confidence and school encouragement seem to discourage less advantaged families from signing their children up to selection tests.
“When disadvantaged students do sit the 11+, they are less likely than equally attaining but more advantaged peers to successfully secure a place at a selective grammar school, and the gap between these two groups becomes more evident at higher levels of national test performance. It is therefore over-simplifying to suggest that the lower proportion of FSM pupils passing the selective school test is entirely the result of their lower academic attainment.”
Co-author Dr Xin Shao (UCL Institute of Education and St Paul’s School) said: “These disparities show how barriers to accessing selective education develop long before the selection and assessment process begins.”
In order to test whether the representation of disadvantaged students at grammar schools would increase if all students sat the 11+, the researchers conducted a simulation. They found that introducing an opt-out system for selection tests, rather than the existing opt-in process, would increase the proportion of disadvantaged pupils at selective schools, but only moderately, from 7.8% to 12%.
The researchers believe that test taking behaviour is not a major driver of the lack of disadvantaged students at selective schools, although revising selection rules to improve fairness remains important. The researchers concluded that, tinkering with the selection process cannot and will not make fundamental differences in opening up a high-quality education to all young people, regardless of background.
Rather than suggesting recommendations to improve access to selective schools, the author team say their findings call into question the fairness of selective schooling systems as a whole.
“Our research tells us that the fundamental problem here is not the mechanics of selection to these exclusive schools, although it remains important at the current stage if selective schooling is retained,” Dr Xin Shao said.
Dr Binwei Lu adds: “It is more about the much deeper social inequalities that shape a child’s chances long before they ever sit the test. Given that, we think it is time to ask whether early-age selective schooling, a system that, by its very nature, tends to exclude disadvantaged pupils, can be made genuinely fair.”
As with all research, the study has some limitations. Notably, it is based on local authority-level data and the authors acknowledge that findings may not generalise fully to other areas with different admissions practices, catchment patterns or levels of competition. They call for further research across other selective areas in England, as well as international comparisons with other countries that operate early-age academic selection.