Grammar Schools and the Inequality Question: Can Meritocracy Survive the 11-Plus?

Grammar Schools and the Inequality Question: Can Meritocracy Survive the 11-Plus?

By the time a child in England reaches their 11th birthday, the die may already be cast. For thousands of families, the 11-plus remains both a gateway to academic opportunity and a symbol of the deep fissures running through the nation’s education system. As ministers revisit plans to expand grammar schools—once again stirring a debate that refuses to die—fresh analysis casts a sharp light on how far disadvantaged pupils remain from the gates of selective education.

New work by Rebecca Johnes at the Education Policy Institute (EPI) paints an unvarnished picture. Grammar schools, she finds, continue to draw their pupils from a narrow social base. Just 2.5 per cent of children in these schools qualify for free school meals, compared with more than 13 per cent across the state sector. Even when grammar intakes are measured against the socioeconomic profile of their own neighbourhoods, poorer pupils are significantly under-represented. The odds of a free-school-meal child living near a grammar school gaining entry are roughly one-fifth of their peers.

It is a stark imbalance—and one that cannot be understood without examining the 11-plus itself.

The Attainment Gap: A Barrier Set Early

To understand who gets into grammar schools, first consider who stands a chance of passing the test. By the time disadvantaged pupils complete primary school, they trail their better-off classmates by nearly ten months of learning. That gap is already evident at age five and widens steadily through the early years.

When EPI researchers used Key Stage 2 results to approximate who would be likely to reach the top quartile—generally deemed the threshold for passing the 11-plus—the pattern was striking. Pupils eligible for free meals were overwhelmingly clustered in the lower half of the attainment distribution. Only a small minority appeared anywhere near the top.

Grammar schools, in short, are fishing almost exclusively from one end of the ability pool.

The Tutoring Arms Race

Layered on top of the attainment gap is a flourishing private tutoring industry. Though largely unregulated, its influence is felt in living rooms, libraries and tutoring centres throughout selective areas.

National surveys suggest that nearly one in five pupils aged 11–16 has received coaching for an entrance test. In heavily selective districts, that figure leaps dramatically. In Sevenoaks, nearly half of 11-plus candidates have had private tuition.

Unsurprisingly, access to tutoring follows the contours of family income. Young people from affluent households are twice as likely to be coached as those from low-income families. For many middle-class parents, tutoring is simply considered the price of admission—another investment in a child’s future. For others, it is an impossibility.

The Myth of the Tutor-Proof Test

Into this landscape stepped the government’s recent claim that “fairer”, more sophisticated tests could help grammar schools identify raw potential rather than trained performance. It is a neat idea, politically attractive, and—according to most researchers—deeply flawed.

Attempts to construct such tests have already been tried, notably in Kent and Buckinghamshire. Both authorities introduced revamped 11-plus exams, marketed as more resistant to coaching. The results, however, were sobering. In Kent, the first year of the new test saw just a 1 per cent shift in the balance between privately and state-educated pupils passing the exam.

Buckinghamshire fared no better. There, the pass rate for state-educated pupils fell after the “tutor-proof” exam was introduced, while the share of privately educated children passing rose to more than 60 per cent. For disadvantaged pupils, the picture was starkest: in one cohort, just ten out of 276 free-school-meal pupils achieved the qualifying score.

Even the test provider itself has tempered its claims. Professor Robert Coe of Durham University’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring—creator of the Buckinghamshire test—readily acknowledges that the concept of measuring “natural ability” is fraught. Intelligence, as most psychologists now accept, is shaped as much by environment as genetics. No exam taken at ten or eleven can hope to strip away the influence of home life, nutrition, school quality or parental support.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that no known assessment can reliably measure “pure potential”—and certainly not in a manner immune to tutoring.

Quotas: A Necessary Correction or a New Inequity?

The government’s Green Paper floated another idea: quotas ensuring that a proportion of places in selective schools are reserved for disadvantaged pupils. Some grammar schools, such as those in the King Edward VI Foundation in Birmingham, have already begun to tread this path by lowering qualifying scores for pupils eligible for the pupil premium.

Yet this raises new questions. If grammar schools admit pupils with a wider range of prior attainment, will their celebrated academic results hold steady? Will they be able to provide the support needed for pupils who begin from a lower starting point? And crucially, will parents accept a system in which children from poorer homes can secure places with lower scores?

The jury is still out. It is too soon to know whether selective schools will maintain their performance with a more diverse intake; the necessary Key Stage 4 data is not yet available. What is clear, however, is that quotas address symptoms rather than causes.

Closing the Gap Before the Exam

Perhaps the most important message in Johnes’s analysis is that the real solution lies not at age eleven, but long before. Grammar school access is, in many ways, a barometer of deeper inequalities. Until the early years and primary system close the gap in literacy, numeracy and cognitive development, selective schools will continue to draw disproportionately from affluent families—regardless of how their entrance tests are designed.

Quotas may shift the numbers at the margins, and tutoring-resistant exams may make modest improvements. But neither strikes at the root of the problem. A genuinely meritocratic system demands that all pupils, whatever their background, reach age eleven with the knowledge, skills and confidence to compete on equal terms.

Until then, the debate over grammar schools—like the attainment gap itself—will continue to widen rather than close.