Do Grammar Schools Really Improve Social Mobility?

Grammar schools have existed for hundreds of years, during this time they have been attributed to enabling a growing sense of social progress by allowing students to have the capacity to climb up the social ladder. Their success is undoubtedly evident in the school league tables, as a growing number of grammar schools are frequenting at the top of the list, therefore competing with top private schools. But are grammar schools really improving social mobility?

To answer this question, we must first examine how successful grammar schools are in providing students, a top class education that they wouldn’t have got otherwise. Plainly from the sheer quality of education, we can see that grammar schools often provide the right environment for bright kids, since the sexually segregated environment can be argued to provide optimum levels of concentration and also allows for a greater sense of maturity by the students. This combined with the excellent facilities and teaching often seen at grammar schools undoubtedly contributes to the often stellar grades achieved by students who attend these schools.

Further justification of the success of grammar schools can be seen by the ‘Outstanding’ rating that more than 90% of grammar schools receive from Ofsted, compared with the 17% national average. Also, of the top 100 schools in the UK, grammar schools make up an astonishing 55 of them. This clearly shows their accomplishment in competing with even the best private schools, some of which charge more than £45,000 a year. The school at the top of the 2011 school league table, ‘Colchester Royal Grammar School’ managed to get 25 of its pupils to Oxbridge, whereas ‘St Pauls’ private school achieved slightly less admissions with 19 of its students gaining a place at Oxbridge. This could be seen as a sign of upward social mobility, since students from grammar schools are often able to contend with and sometimes even defeat their counterparts from private schools.

While the success of grammar schools is clearly evident, however we must not forget the criteria of social mobility. We must now scrutinize how well the working class are often assisted through grammar schools. Grammar schools are clearly very ethnically diverse, but how socially diverse are they? Research by the ‘Sutton Trust’ as shown that the majority of grammar school pupils are from middle class backgrounds, this can also be seen by the fact that 4.5% of pupils attending grammar school are eligible for free school meals, as opposed to the national average of 15.4%. This is not a good sign, since how can grammar schools be seen to be improving social mobility if they are mainly assisting middle class families as opposed to working class families?

The average household income for students at grammar schools is over £45,000, which is more than 30% higher than the national average. This suggests that not enough working class students attend these schools. A reason for this could be a result of the frequent attitude shared by working class parents that the school their child attends, does not make a difference to their attainment. We have established this to be largely false, since going to a grammar school has been shown to be significantly more advantageous for students than attending a comprehensive. This attitude, combined with the lack of adequate preparation for, and the high costs of tuition towards the 11-plus entrance exams, acts as a deterrence for working class parents, and significantly lowers the chances of their children gaining entrance into grammar schools and consequently hinders their potential for social mobility.

In essence, it would be fair to conclude that although grammar schools can be seen to be largely beneficial for those who attend it, as demonstrated by the high grades often achieved by students there. They can’t, however be seen as improving social mobility since the pupils are for the most part middle class, so in a way grammar schools can be viewed by middle class parents, as a free alternative to sending their children to private schools. This henceforth forces me to conclude that the merits of grammar schools are invariably undermined by the fact that they only allow for restricted social mobility since they simply do not do enough for the working class.