School (Reform of Pupil Selection) Bill [HL]

Second Reading

Moved by

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a patron of Comprehensive Future.

Although this Bill concerns a relatively small section of England’s schools, it is concerned with a significant principle about how our education system and service is organised. I believe profoundly that it is an important principle that the education service should provide access on an equitable basis to all children and young people. This is not, of course, what happens in the 35 local authorities where access to certain state-funded schools is on a selective basis.

The majority of the most successful education systems globally are of a comprehensive nature, meaning that, post their primary education, where there is virtually no selection, all children are welcomed by their local school—although I will address the issue of special schools later. Professor Stephen Gorard and Dr Nadia Siddiqui from Durham University have looked into selection. They conclude that

“pupils attending grammar schools are stratified in terms of chronic poverty, ethnicity … 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 socio-economic status… between schools, and uses these to show that the results from grammar schools are no better than expected, once these differences are accounted for.”

Gorard and Siddiqui further conclude that:

“The UK government should consider phasing the existing selective schools out”

in England. Such an opportunity is afforded by this Bill.

Comprehensive schools raise the attainment of all children. More children do better in a comprehensive system. The attainment gap, which has increased since the pandemic, between disadvantaged and more advantaged pupils, is narrower in comprehensive schools. Figures from the DfE show that non-selective—that is, secondary modern schools in selected areas—produce poor results, statistically significantly below the national average because of the nature of their skewed intake. Research from the University College London Social Research Institute shows that access to grammar schools is highly skewed by a child’s socioeconomic status, with the most deprived families living in grammar school areas standing only a 6% chance of attending a selective school. Interestingly, Gorard and Siddiqui note that their

“analysis also shows that the chances of accessing a grammar school vary hugely by family background, even when we compare children who have the same attainment at age 11”—

or possibly 10—as determined by key stage 2 stats.

Access to grammar schools by pupils from wealthier backgrounds is also likely to be associated with additional private tutoring that is not available to their economically disadvantaged peers. Therefore, the 11-plus has become a test that favours those with the ability to pay for tuition, a suggestion supported by the fact that only 3% of children in grammar schools are entitled to free school meals, the most widespread proxy for poverty in our system, as opposed to the 18% to 20% entitlement to free school meals in non-selective schools. At present, about 5% of pupils in England attend a grammar school, but as many as 19% are affected by academic selection, with about 100,000 pupils a year sitting the 11-plus—or, rather, an 11-plus, given that there are over 100 different 11-plus tests. Different selective areas and different grammar schools in so-called non-selective areas all set their own tests. There is no official body overseeing the 11-plus. Neither the DfE nor anyone else is responsible for quality-assuring this multiplicity of tests.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving your Lordships’ House the opportunity to consider the issue of academic selection for schools, which was, until Prime Minister’s Questions in the other place on Wednesday, probably the most politicised issue in the education system. How do 163 schools in more affluent areas demand such attention, when there are 4,081 schools that are non-selective? Should the local decision-making that has allowed this historical anomaly to exist be taken away by central government to end this situation? I support this Bill as the status quo is unacceptable.

Nothing that I say is to denigrate the hard work of those in these schools. It is not personal, but it is principled and pragmatic. Here, briefly, are three reasons: education is a social experience; there should be parity of parental choice; and there is what I term the micro-geography of education.

While some non-selective schools do not have a broad background of pupils and some families ameliorate the issues I will outline with extracurricular social activities, the profile of our grammar schools, with few exceptions, is narrow. They do not have many children with additional needs, who are on free school meals or who are looked-after. At the census date last year, 68 of our grammar schools had no looked-after children at key stages 3 or 4. That is a product of not giving priority admissions and selecting on the basis of the entrance test only. If I think back to my school and remove all those children, it would have been a poorer education.

Additionally, 13% of children entering grammar schools come from outside the state sector—presumably they are from abroad or the private sector, or have been home-educated—compared with 2% in other state schools. Nowadays, employers do not want qualifications only; they want an appreciation of different talents and life experiences, as well as protected characteristics. Is this really the education we want in the 21st century, and should the taxpayer be funding it? Can the Minister outline whether the taxpayer funds the costs of running these additional examinations?

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Blower for promoting this Bill on a subject whose time has come. At a time of scarce public resources, there is a need to spread them as equitably as possible and that particularly applies to education.

What a pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge: we discussed education issues at the Dispatch Box on many occasions. We rarely agreed, for obvious reasons, but we are in agreement today and I am pleased that she is part of this debate.

Those in favour of grammar schools claim that they help to increase social mobility, but the evidence points in the opposite direction. Today, less than 3% of pupils at grammar schools are eligible for free school meals, compared with 18% in non-selective schools. If grammar schools were really increasing social mobility, all—every one of the 163—would need to demonstrate that more than 18% of their intake were entitled to free school meals. It is clear that they are not increasing social mobility in the areas in which they currently operate.

I have a problem with the term “social mobility”, and grammar schools epitomise the reason why. To give a disadvantaged few a hand up in any sphere is always welcome but, as the free school meals figures show, when it comes to school pupils, they are very few. This suggests a level of self-satisfaction, coupled with an acceptance that the remainder of pupils can be left pretty much to carry on as before. That is why I prefer the term “social justice” to social mobility, because we need to consider the school population in its widest sense and ensure that we do all we can to improve learning and outcomes for all pupils, not just the fortunate few.

Let us not sugar-coat the issue: grammar schools are often much better at social selection than at academic selection. Many children who succeed in gaining entry to grammar schools are from two categories: those who have attended private prep schools rather than their local primary school and so are already privileged, or those who have remained within the state system but come from families whose parents can afford to pay for private tutoring to ensure their children pass the 11-plus exam. I think I know the Minister well enough to believe she genuinely wants to see an increase in social mobility, but not enough in her party share that aim. If they did, surely they would invest more in early years education, the stage at which state intervention makes the greatest contribution to a child’s life chances.

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for bringing forward this important Bill and giving us the chance to have this important debate, and for taking steps to implement a long-term, consistent Green Party policy—which I have no doubt will be a priority of the first Green Government, should it still be an issue.

I say that noting line ED112 of the Green Party’s policies for a sustainable society, which says:

“Selection by aptitude, ability, or social class runs counterproductive to creating a high quality education system for all students. Excellent all-ability schools with balanced intakes are the best way of ensuring that every child receives a first-rate education”.

The policy goes on to say:

“Many of the existing problems in our admissions system stem from the emphasis on SATS and League Tables, both of which the Green Party will abolish”.

I quote that second point because there is in the nature of grammar schools a fundamental underlying problem of the way that we currently look at education. It is set up as a competition between pupils trying to get into schools, and between schools trying to get higher on the league tables. If we look at this in a much broader context we see that we face so many issues given the state of our world today. We need to develop the human potential of every person on this planet to the best possible level. That would be to the benefit of all of us. It is not a case of saying, “We’re going to get our school system ahead so it’s better than somebody else’s.” We all benefit the better schooling is all around this country, and all around the world.

Many noble Lords already set out some of the stats, figures and evidence, but it is worth picking out three points from three sets of evidence. First, I refer to a Durham University study published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education in 2018. Using the kind of measures that the Government themselves like to use—what it describes as “effectiveness”; that is, exam results—the study found that, once the nature of the intake, including chronic poverty, ethnicity, home language, special educational needs and age of the group, had been taken into account, grammar schools are no more or less effective in outcomes than other schools. They do not achieve what they aim to achieve. The study found that their apparent success is due just to the selection of the pupils.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to support this important and timely Bill. I thank my noble friend Lady Blower greatly for introducing it. It has not actually been much of a debate so far; the speeches have been remarkably one-sided. I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply, but that one-sidedness reflects the situation we are in.

This debate is timely. This week saw the launch of an active campaign on the issue, Time’s Up for the Test. It is important, in the sense that it raises the profile of this issue. Those involved in education will be conscious that there has come a time when this issue will need to be confronted; it cannot be tucked under the carpet any more. The mission statement of Time’s Up for the Test says:

“We want the remnants of the discredited secondary school system which dates back to the 1940s to be swept away. Nowhere in England should young children be divided on the basis of some ill-conceived perception of intelligence. The 11+ should be abolished and every child should have the right to attend a comprehensive school.”

I could not put it any better myself, so I am happy to quote what it says. We are talking about comprehensive education. The basis is that all children benefit from a fully comprehensive education; that is education in its wider sense—not just exams but how you learn to live in society.

Earlier in the week, the Prime Minister, in answering a question, referred to parental aspiration. All parents have aspirations for their children; it is only a subset who have the money to support those aspirations. If you really want to aspire then comprehensive education is best for all.

It is important not to underestimate the significance of selective education. There are still 11 local authorities that the Department for Education designates as being highly selective—that is where more than 25% of pupils attend grammar schools. The Department for Education’s own figures show that schools in highly selective areas have the lowest attainment, statistically below the national average. There is no evidence that the high-attaining children gain any advantage but clear evidence that those who find it more difficult to attain a high standard of education do worse. It is one-sided.

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and other noble Lords, I take part in the Learn with the Lords programme, which involves all types of schools, from maintained schools to academies, independent schools and grammar schools, and I meet children and young people who want to learn and are excited about learning. For me, it is about the young people themselves and how we develop them for the best and provide opportunities for all children. I support the School (Reform of Pupil Selection) Bill and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for bringing it forward. I am pleased that such an important issue is being given the appropriate attention.

Supporters of selective grammar schools often remind us of such schools’ superior results. Admittedly, data pointing to such conclusions abound. For instance, the 2017-18 GCSE attainment data between grammar schools and non-selective schools in highly selective areas show that the average attainment per pupil was higher by almost 30 points in selective schools. When this House briefly discussed grammar schools in June, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, used an analogy to address such statistics. He said that if a hospital was allowed to choose patients and admit only those very lightly injured, its mortality rate would be impressively low. The same goes for schools. If a school is allowed to admit only pupils with above average aptitude, of course its results will be better than those of schools offering education to every student regardless of their abilities. In fact, those who use such data to justify the outdated and frankly traumatising system of selection and rejection would do well to remember the first law of scientific research: association is not causation.

Even disregarding the unfair advantage given to selective schools in allowing them to choose who to admit and who to reject, we can find hardly any evidence-based justification for their existence. It is often said that such schools are centres of excellence, being especially well adapted to accommodating and developing the above average abilities of their students. Yet a University of Durham study which looked at chronic poverty, special educational needs, home language and age in year groups found no evidence that grammar schools were more or less effective than any other schools. Once again, it was pupils’ overall circumstances rather than the school they went to that decisively influenced their academic performance. It would be good if the Government focused on addressing this recurring pattern of academic underachievement and underprivileged background instead of trying to perpetuate an outdated, unfair and exclusive model of schooling.

My Lords, I very much welcome my noble friend’s Bill. Like her, I am a patron of Comprehensive Future. The relevance of this debate is, of course, that we are in the lead-up to the next election, and we will be interested in my noble friend’s response to this debate. It is a good opportunity, too, for the Minister to state expressly the Government’s offer and promise in relation to selective education and grammar schools. Going back, in 2016, Theresa May as Prime Minister said that the Government intended to lift the ban on the creation of new selective schools. That was in the 2017 manifesto. Since then, we know that, had the Schools Bill made progress in your Lordships’ House and gone to the Commons, a number of concerned MPs there would have wished to amend it to get rid of the ban on selective education. My noble friend Lord Watson quoted Graham Brady’s views and his article in House magazine in July, in which I think it would be fair to say that he evangelised for grammar schools. It is therefore legitimate for us to ask the Minister to say, when she winds up on my noble friend’s Bill, what the Government’s view on selective education is.

I am old enough, I am afraid, to have been brought up in a selective system of education in Oxford. I lived through the experience of the pressure of taking the 11-plus exam, the private coaching that did take place, even in the 1960s, and the devastating impact on so many children who “failed” the 11-plus exam and went to secondary modern schools. I do not underestimate the hard work of teachers in those schools, but they had much less resource and less ambition, and we consigned so many young people to a future that did not always have a positive outcome.

We need to remember that the move to comprehensive education was hugely popular, because this wretched system that divided children when they took the exam, mostly at 10, was very unpopular with many people. Those who now argue for grammar schools present only the image of children who passed the 11-plus; they never talk about the impact on the others. They simply assume that the comprehensive system, if you like, can just chunter on, without grammar schools having a devastating impact on it.

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue.

The central point I want to make today is that we have to make education, and improving standards in education for all young people, our country’s number one priority. In a world in which technology and skills are crucial but in which we are finding it harder and harder to compete, there can be no more important issue. Improving education would enable us to tackle all sorts of issues. It would not just help young people to lead more prosperous and fulfilled lives but strengthen the economy, help us to tackle the deficit, bring new investment and better jobs to towns that have lost traditional industries and reduce the costs of inequality and poverty on the NHS, housing and benefits.

Unfortunately, when it comes to literacy and numeracy, we are lagging behind our competitors. It is not just countries such as China and South Korea; we are struggling even to compete with post-communist nations—Estonia, Poland and Slovenia. For decades, Germany has provided many more apprenticeships and had much better technical education.

Let us look at the challenges in education: so many working-class pupils, particularly white, working-class boys, leaving school without even basic qualifications; decades of not taking technical education seriously enough or providing enough apprenticeships; and a teacher recruitment crisis. Look at yesterday’s scandalous figures showing the plummeting number of young people going into teacher training. Look at the catastrophe of Covid for children from poor or overcrowded homes or those with special needs.

Given all that, who would say, as the Minister for School Standards appointed in September did—thankfully, he is no longer in office—that their “biggest fear of all” in education is the abolition of charitable status for private schools? Whatever you think of the idea, who would say it is the biggest problem in education?

The noble Lord is making his case, but the school in which it was piloted in Liverpool, the Belvedere School, has since joined the state system as a state academy and does not have selective admissions or fees any more. Might there not be a lesson from this that if more of these elite private schools joined the state system, access to them would be much more open than with them charging fees of £15,000, £20,000, £25,000, £30,000, £35,000, £40,000 or £45,000 a year?