James Coombs, the creator of the excellent Trak.org.uk website, has created a data visualisation showing the proportion of disadvantaged pupils attending grammar schools relative to the total proportion in their area. This is based on recent research by the BBC which studied how grammar school admission policies have adapted to try to make grammar schools more inclusive. The green dotted line shows where schools would be if they admitted as many disadvantaged pupils as the local authority. It’s notable that no grammar schools manage to reach parity with the proportion of disadvantaged pupils in their community.
The chart shows some schools do appear to have made efforts to admit more disadvantaged pupils, but they are clearly in a minority. If you move your mouse over any school you can see the detail of the admission criteria they use to give poorer pupils priority, if any such policy is in place.
Thanks to James Coombs for sharing this work with CF.