IOE research centre co-hosts House of Commons event on grammar schools and social mobility

The event, chaired by Lucy Powell MP, and featuring the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities’ (CEPEO) director Professor Lindsey Macmillan, also considers policy options for the future.

Despite being relatively few in number, the question of grammar schools remains controversial in education policy debates. Some believe they help social mobility while others argue that they only exacerbate the issue. 

There are currently only 163 grammar schools in the UK, educating around 5% of pupils in the state school sector. Only recently the government allocated £14.3 million funding of six grammar school expansion projects, designed to create over 1,100 additional selective school places. 

The event’s speakers address research questions around who gets into grammar school, the costs and benefits of selective systems, the impact of progression into higher education and social mobility. The topics build on discussions in the recent HEPI paper ‘Social Mobility and Higher Education: Are Grammar Schools the Answer?’.

Professor Alice Sullivan, Principal Investigator of 1970 British Cohort Study at the IOE’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), also spoke at the event. Professor Sullivan explained what cohort studies reveal about grammar schools, higher education, and social mobility.

Professor Macmillan said: “Selective schooling systems remain a contentious issue, with both sides firm in their beliefs. Yet rarely in academia is there such agreement in the empirical findings that grammar schools harm social mobility.

“This event takes this consensus of evidence to Westminster, to disseminate the research to key decision makers, and to debate why these schools remain so popular despite the consistency of findings from empirical research.  We will show the advantaged backgrounds of pupils who go to grammar schools, even comparing similarly high achieving children, and how selective systems exacerbate inequalities across generations."

Lucy Powell MP said: “Social mobility shouldn’t be about plucking the tiny few bright but poor children from their local schools and shipping them off to grammar schools. It should be about ensuring all children have access to an excellent school place in their local school which helps them fulfil their potential.

“That’s why this event in Parliament today is so important. It will provide the evidence to policymakers on the impact of selective schools on our education system so an informed choice can be made about how resource is invested, and policies prioritised.”

Links

• View Professor Lindsey Macmillan’s research profile
• View Professor Alice Sullivan’s research profile
• Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities’ (CEPEO)
• Department of Learning and Leadership
• Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS)
• Department of Social Science
• Read the HEPI paper: ‘Social Mobility and Higher Education: Are Grammar Schools the Answer?’

Image

Image: Wellington College via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)