If you ever feel bad for not sending your child to a private or grammar school, assuming it would do wonders for their grades, don’t fret - it doesn’t make a huge difference, according to a new study.
Researchers at King’s College London (KCL) found attending a selective school (whether private or grammar) may not automatically improve a child’s chances of getting good GCSE grades and suggested that the type of school a child goes to has little impact on their academic achievement.
The study, based on an analysis of more than 4,000 students in England and Wales, did find that students at private and grammar schools scored around a grade higher across English, maths and science, than their peers in non-selective schools. But once factors such as family income, achievement at age 11, cognitive ability and genes linked to educational achievement, were taken into account there was less than a 10th of a grade difference in results.
“Our study suggests that for educational achievement there appears to be little added benefit from attending selective schools,” said Emily Smith-Woolley, lead author of the study published in the journal npj Science of Learning. “Although school type appears to have little impact on achievement at GCSE, there are many reasons why parents opt to send their children to selective schools. Further research is needed to identify if school type makes a difference in other outcomes, such as university and career success.”
However the results have proved controversial as Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at the University of Oxford, disputed the finding that selective schools do not improve a child’s grades. “For the authors’ interpretation of their findings to be true, the implication is that the large majority of children in the UK – who live and grow up in areas with no grammar schools and almost no private schools – have, on average, a genetic predisposition not to be that able,” he told The Guardian. “The idea that private schools do not increase a child’s chance of being awarded more GCSEs and A-levels is not very credible.”
Controversial proposals to lift the ban on creating new grammar schools were a key part of the Conservative manifesto in last year’s snap general election, but the plans were dropped in the wake of the election result, which saw the Tories lose their overall majority. But grammars can still take on more pupils under rules that allow good state schools to expand.
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