Educating the Poor

While the BBC led with the story that the top £40,000 a year private school, Eton, will offer a dozen poor kids a 6th form bursaries each year, the Independent reports that  a sector of grammar schools which receives special government funding had reduced their intake of poor pupils.

Just over 7 per cent of places at grammar schools that will receive expansion funding were offered to disadvantaged pupils. These schools were chosen on the condition that they would boost their numbers of poorer children.  Just 145 of 1,929 places for September 2019 were awarded to pupil premium children – despite the fact that all the schools offered priority to poorer pupils in their admission policies. 

Nuala Burgess, chair of campaign group Comprehensive Future, has said the government’s policy to improve social mobility is “not working”, adding its grammar school ideology is “fundamentally flawed”.

She said: “Even at their most ambitious, grammar schools admit very few disadvantaged pupils. The £200m allocated for grammar school expansion is a scandalous waste of money.” The policy of awarding additional funding to a handful of grammar schools as she argues they are “doing little to earn their windfall”.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the figures show that the expansion of grammar schools will not improve social mobility for the vast majority of pupils. He added: “Severe teacher shortages and real-terms cuts in funding in the state sector are the issues which the government should be addressing in order to give every child the best possible chance in life, rather than becoming distracted by a policy on increasing selection which is not the right way to move forward in the 21st century.”

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “The justification for this preferential funding for selective schools was that they would take in more children from poorer backgrounds but this is clearly not happening.” She added it was a “travesty” that the government had allocated funding to grammar school expansion when the state school sector is “reeling from massive cuts”.