Grammar schools 'no escape route for poorer children'

The case for grammar schools as ladders of opportunity for bright working class children was dented yesterday by government figures showing that selective state secondaries have hardly any pupils from poor families.

In some areas less than 1% of grammar school pupils are eligible for free school meals the most commonly used indicator of poverty. And in every part of the country still practising selection by ability at 11, grammar schools have far fewer poor pupils than the average for their area.

Anti-selection campaigners seized on the figures as evidence for the abolition of England's remaining 166 grammar schools. Under powers in last year's education act, parents will be able to petition from September 1 for local ballots on whether they should survive.

Margaret Tulloch, of the campaign for state education, said: "These figures give the lie to the idea that grammar schools offer an escape route for children from low income families. "

Graham Lane, education chairman of the Local Government Association, said: "This is stark evidence that grammar schools are not taking their fair share of working class children. They are not offering ladders of opportunity. They are closing the door to poor children who are disadvantaged at 11, but who develop educationally by 16.

"I knew the position was bad, but I am surprised it is as bad as this. This amounts to social discrimination by grammar schools that should make them more irrelevant in the next century than I realised."

But Stan Danks, of the National Grammar Schools Association executive, said its secondaries were not middle-class enclaves. Pupils qualified for free school meals if their parents were on benefit, but there were many children from relatively poor backgrounds who did not qualify.

"My gut feeling is that grammar schools have a fair representation of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds."

The figures came in a parliamentary answer showing less than 1% of grammar school pupils on free school meals in Stoke-on-Trent, Wiltshire and Shropshire, and less than 2% in North Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and the London boroughs of Barnet, Bromley and Sutton.

The grammar school average is 3.4 per cent, compared to a national average of 18 per cent.

In areas where grammar schools remain, parents with children in feeder schools will be allowed to petition for a ballot. The first are expected at Ripon in North Yorkshire and the Medway towns area of Kent, early next year.