Grammar schools benefit rich, says OECD

By Sean Coughlan BBC Education correspondent

15 September 2016

Grammar schools are likely to benefit wealthy families without raising overall standards, says the OECD's head of education. Andreas Schleicher said international evidence suggested that selection was not linked to improving schools. He said bright pupils in England were not getting enough opportunities, but grammar school tests were not reliable. "Any kind of one-off test is likely to favour social background over true academic potential," he said. Education Secretary Justine Greening has published plans calling for more selective schools in England, and a Department for Education spokesman said any new grammars would "prioritise the admission of disadvantaged pupils".

Mr Schleicher, the think tank's education director, was presenting the OECD's annual report comparing education systems across the industrialised world. He said there was no relationship between increasing selection and how well school systems performed. And countries such as Germany and Switzerland, where selection was widely used, were not more likely to produce high-achieving students. "You might expect that where you have more grammar schools, you will have more of the really top students, that's not what we've seen," said Mr Schleicher. The OECD education expert said access to selective schools was often unfairly biased towards wealthier families - and that contradicted the aim of stretching the most talented. "I can see the case for introducing more meritocracy in the school system. Bright students here don't always have the educational opportunities they deserve," said Mr Schleicher.

"But what happens in most European systems is that academic selection becomes social selection. Schools are very good at selecting students by their social background, but they're not very good at selecting students by their academic potential." When admission to school was based on a one-off test, he said, "wealthy parents will find a way through it". But there were Asian school systems, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, that seemed to be more effective in how they selected pupils. "They are selective, but they seem to be very good at figuring out how good students really are," said Mr Schleicher. But focusing on grammars and selection was not the way to raise standards. "I think the importance of grammar schools is dramatically overplayed," he said. And there should be more investment for "more schools that are more demanding and more rigorous".

[So, yet again a study is produced stating the bleeding obvious. It’s been known for a very long time that the kind of selective schools represented by Grammar schools favour those who are already advantaged whilst hardly assisting those from less advantaged backgrounds. As the author of the reports said: "wealthy parents will find a way through it" – either by employing tutors or by other means. There has to be a better way than going back to the Grammar school system of the past – what next Secondary Moderns – and essentially labelling people as failures at the age of 11. Sure bright children from all social backgrounds should be encouraged and everyone should get a decent education but this type of selection visibly failed in the past and will undoubtedly fail again.]