A study by two researchers at the London Institute of Education has discovered some unsurprising facts about tutoring for grammar school places across the country.
For me, the most important one is that taking school achievement at the end of Key State One into account, children are 20% more likely to be found selective if they have been tutored than not. Actually, I am surprised by this one as I would have thought it higher than this, as explained below.
They also come up with the slightly bizarre proposal to tax tutors and use the funds raised to provide vouchers to assist lower income families to purchase tutoring, an idea that has gained much media coverage. I consider this counterproductive, unworkable nonsense, as also explained below.
The research has received considerable media attention including two interventions by me on BBC SE and Meridian TV. Interestingly the BBC has rapidly dropped the item from its website!
However, the headline is that children living in prosperous areas and who receive tutoring are far more likely to be offered a grammar school place than those living in deprived areas without tutoring, but who may not have chosen to apply for grammar school.
The key table is as follows:
In other words, just 14% of those living in selective areas who were not coached gained grammar school places. But surely, as seems likely, the large majority of those not coached never applied for grammar school in the first place (and so presumably should not have been counted in the statistic) this is an utterly meaningless finding. To underline this, of the sample taken, 661 of the 819 children in the sample were not coached, an astonishingly high proportion if only children applying to grammar school were considered. There is a minority of areas, such as Buckinghamshire, where all children (except) those whose parents opt out, take the test, and this is likely to swell the proportion of children who took the test, who had no tutoring and did not pass (they may not have even wished to be part of the process!). However, by lumping Kent (where taking the selection test is completely optional) and Bucks together the data becomes even more meaningless.
Indeed the whole exercise appears based on the flawed causation that it is primarily tutoring that makes the difference between attending grammar school or not. There may well be other reasons why more children in prosperous areas gain grammar school places, than tutoring; parental aspiration, private schools that focus on selection issues, more more able children as demonstrated in Kent by differential Key Stage 2 results in West and East Kent; primary school attitudes to selection; school experience post Key Stage One; etc.
One of the Main Findings of the Study Families with the same level of income are much more likely to pay for private tutoring during primary school if they live in an area with a large number of grammar schools, than if they live in areas without grammar schools -Wow! |
None of this denies that coaching often makes a difference and there is no doubt it is a factor of unfairness in school allocation. However, the data in this article suggests it is less likely than I would first have considered. You will find in many comprehensive areas that selection by Post Code or religious affiliation is equally if not more contentious to families, but of course it is not a media or political issue.
Kent and Medway have some 20 academically and socially selective Independent schools. Entry to these s usually by entrance exams, for which there is extensive tutoring often in preparatory schools. Surely this sets out to create a social gulf and barrier to mobility through an independent sector that is considerably greater and more influential than anywhere else in Western Europe.
With 8% of the countries school children in private schools as against 5% in grammar schools, is there anyone offering to research this area of education.
Unfortunately, it is riddled with flaws and impossibilities, which suggest the authors have little idea of the workings of education on the ground. Let us first consider the established tutoring companies. Most not only prepare children for the Kent Test, but provide general support in key subjects for children who need extra help, perhaps being failed by their primary schools, or perhaps with Special Needs. Many also prepare children for GCSE and sometimes A Level. Some for admission to selective private schools. Are all these to be taxed for all their work, as otherwise many of these institutions will in any case work to recategorise their preparation as curriculum support. It is starting to get complicated, so overheads will rise? Then there are the private schools teaching up to and sometimes beyond the age of eleven. Many of these exist just to get children into grammar school. Are these all to be taxed, or just those that advertise eleven plus success?
Then there is the vast industry of less formal private tuition, which will be impossible to pin down, although even if it could, again a surprisingly high proportion of it exists to provide curriculum support.
Let us assume funds can be raised. I suspect an army of less privileged families will present themselves as suitable for vouchers. How will the lucky few (for I doubt there will be that much to go round) be selected: free school meals or pupil premium – will all receive vouchers or just those recommended by the primary school. Sadly, too many primary headteachers already run a mile to avoid giving a firm recommendation, yes or no. Or perhaps it will be self-nomination, with someone again having to make comparative judgments on insufficient objective information.
The only conclusion I can come to is that this has been put forward as an Aunt Sally, to be knocked down and ‘no solution’ declared.
As Professor Jerrim said on television on Thursday, he hoped that he would be asked by the Department for Education to expand on his views. I can only hope the DfE uses due diligence about any such proposal.
More importantly, KCC has started to implement some of these strategies to reduce the discrepancy and recommend others to academies where it has no power to direct.
It is good to see super-selective schools such as Judd and Skinners offering a set number of places to the highest achieving children on Pupil Premium.
One example of the complexity of the issue found was the identification of some primary schools in areas of deprivation where the powerful government priority of achieving the then Level 4 at KS2 took all of the schools’ effort. This meant that high achieving pupils were too often neglected so that work on higher levels in English and maths which would have been supportive of success in the Kent Test was diminished. Nothing to do with tutoring, but I very much doubt the study took this into account!