A major new academic study of Kent’s 11-plus data concludes that tinkering with selection can’t make it fair, and that the case for selective schooling itself needs to be reconsidered.
A significant new study in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, draws on data from Kent, the most heavily selective county in England. It asks two questions: which children sit the 11+, and which of them pass?
The answers are stark. Among pupils not eligible for free school meals, 67% sat the entrance test. Among those who were eligible, just 40% did.
That isn’t simply about attainment. Looking only at pupils who scored highly in their Key Stage 2 SATs, it found 84% of non-FSM pupils sat the 11+, compared with 56% of FSM pupils. Academically capable disadvantaged children are being filtered out before the test begins.
Disadvantaged pupils who take the 11+ are also less likely to pass than more advantaged pupils with similar attainment. As lead author Dr Binwei Lu puts it, it is “over-simplifying” to say the lower pass rate among FSM pupils simply reflects lower academic attainment.
The authors point to barriers among disadvantaged pupils including a potential lack of confidence, and the paper also raises questions about what the selection test actually measures, noting that the test scores are not published, which makes proper scrutiny impossible.
Two popular fixes won’t fix this issue
Two reforms are often put forward as ways of making grammar schools fairer: an opt-out system, in which every child sits the test unless their family declines, and extra marks for disadvantaged pupils.
The researchers modelled the opt-out scenario. Their simulation found it would raise the proportion of disadvantaged pupils at selective schools only from 7.8% to 12%. That is an improvement, but a small one, and it would still leave grammar schools heavily skewed towards the better off. The authors conclude that test-taking behaviour is not the main driver of the gap.
“Tinkering cannot make a fundamental difference”
This is where the study goes further. Rather than ending with a list of recommendations for improving access, the authors say their findings call into question the fairness of selective systems as a whole. They write that “tinkering with the selection process cannot and will not make fundamental differences” to opening up a grammar school education to all young people regardless of background.
Dr Lu adds that the problem “is about the much deeper social inequalities that shape a child’s chances long before they ever sit the test”, and asks whether early-age selection, “a system that, by its very nature, tends to exclude disadvantaged pupils, can be made genuinely fair.”
The paper’s conclusion is blunter still: the challenges it reveals are “likely to be somewhat insurmountable”, which “calls into question the use of selective schooling systems entirely”.
Why this matters for the debate
For years, the response to evidence of inequality in grammar school admissions has been to propose adjustments: outreach, test-prep support, opt-out testing, lower pass marks for some pupils. This study tests some of these ideas and finds that they do not get to the root of the problem.
That fits what Comprehensive Future has long argued: unfairness is not a glitch in selection, but a built-in feature of it. A system that sorts children at age 10 will always reflect the advantages families already have. Comparative evidence cited in the paper, covering 17 countries, shows that advantaged families find their way to the best positions in any system, but that the effect of social background is larger where there is more early selection.
A note on the evidence
The authors are clear about limits: the study uses Kent data, and findings may not generalise fully to all areas with selective admissions. They call for further research across other selective areas and for international comparisons. But Kent is the largest and most selective grammar school area in the country, and its results are hard to dismiss.
What we’re asking for
If even the best-intentioned reforms leave the gap this wide, the question is no longer how to make selection fairer, but whether to keep it at all. We’re calling on policymakers to take seriously the evidence that selective systems cannot deliver fair access, and to move towards fully comprehensive education.
