Paul Carter, Leader of KCC gave an important interview with The Times published on Monday, along with commentary by the newspaper, reproduced below. He expresses concern that the proportion of pupils admitted to Kent’s 32 grammar schools has risen well over the 25% target set by the Council, risking weakening the specialist purpose of grammar schools and damaging non-selective schools near by diluting the quality of their intake.
In fact, I wrote a similar analysis of the situation earlier this year, but went further and explored the reasons why the proportion of Year 7 Kent grammar school pupils had risen slightly to 31.7% between 2012 and 2017, and why it was above 25%.
Paul’s article, whilst showing regret about the situation, identifies his own reasons for the increased proportion and gives no indication there is an appetite to wind back the proportion of children going on the grammar school. Indeed, I don’t believe that with the loss of control by KCC to the academy system this would be possible.
Grammar schools in England's largest selective local authority have been accused by their own council leader of lowering entry standards to boost income.
Paul Carter, Conservative leader of Kent county council, said that some selective schools had dropped the test scores required by pupils to gain admission after reforms enabled grammar schools to expand. This risks weakening the specialist purpose of grammar schools and is damaging to non-selective schools near by, he said.
Mr Carter said that Kent had always intended that its grammar schools should provide specialist teaching for about 25 per cent of the brightest children. This proportion stands at 31.8 per cent and has risen by 2.1 percentage points since 2012, when the government allowed popular schools to expand and encouraged schools to become academies, which control their own admissions.
"Many now set their own pass rate and will fill the school up no matter what," Mr Carter said. "If you were a "governor of a grammar school and every pupil that comes along is [worth] nearly £5,000 you want to try and fill the grammar school up and have full forms of entry. The tendency now is to set a pass rate that fills the grammar school. I think you have got to be careful that you don't dilute the specialism of grammar schools, which are there to provide a learning environment for the highly academic students."
He did not identify individual schools but said that the problem was more concentrated in the eastern half of Kent rather than in areas such as Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, where selective schools are in demand from families in Sussex and London boroughs.
Grammar schools in east Kent, which includes Canterbury, Thanet and Swale, have the lowest proportion of 11-year-old children attending but this has risen from 25.2 per cent in 2012 to 26.3 per cent last year, according to the authority's data.
In May the government announced a £50 million fund to create more places at selective schools. An analysis by The Times of the proportion of pupils attending grammar schools in all-selective counties found that this fell in areas with high population growth, such as Slough and Trafford, but has risen in Medway, Southend-on-Sea, Torbay, Sutton and Wirral, as well as Kent.
"Many now set their own pass rate and will fill the school up no matter what." I disagree with this statement. There is a standard pass rate, fixed so that with Head Teacher Assessment there is a target of 25% of the population passing, which has been maintained for many years. The seven oversubscribed super selective and partially super-selective grammar schools set a pass score to select their Planned Admission Number, which is invariably well above the county pass rate. The four grammar schools in Dover and Folkestone and two other girls grammars all recruit to the county standard but also have an alternative test to enable pupils to qualify. In the case of the Dover and Folkestone schools, and indeed some others in East Kent where there is high social deprivation this enables more pupils on Pupil Premium to qualify in line with county policy. About a quarter of Kent's grammar schools have vacancies on allocation in March every year, all following Kent's pass policy scrupulously. Half of these were in Maidstone and Ashford.
There is indeed a problem in the West of the county, where grammar schools are under siege from out of county families. My article identifies the three main reasons for more than 25% of places in Kent schools being taken up by grammar school pupils: school appeals (the largest factor); some grammar schools setting their own tests; and pressures from out of county pupils. The quoted proportional rise in East Kent is actually lower than that in the rest of the county.
The comment by Jim Skinner is completely wrong, as he surely knows, being head of a grammar school near to Kent. As already noted, a quarter of Kent's grammar schools had vacancies for September 2018 after allocation in March. Another seven turned away fewer than 10 first choices. The 6.3% increase in official grammar school places has failed to keep pace with the overall rise in population of 12%.
I cannot see the Kent Test changing in character unless legislation forces it to. The government proposal to limit future expansion of grammar schools to those offering increased opportunities for pupils receiving pupil premium would surely be wrong if it offered differential standard pass rates. I have no sense of further grammar schools seeking to set their own tests amongst those with vacancies.