The national press have picked up a story from the Grammar Schools Heads Association that grammar schools are to “favour poor pupils in admissions”, suggesting that middle class parents are facing a fresh battle to get children into grammar schools. The grammar schools in Bucks are under attack for a number of reasons.

First, because parents, whatever class they are, whose children go to a state school already face a battle getting their children into a grammar school. Wycombe Labour Party has exposed the fact that, under the new Bucks 11+ exam, devised and administered now by the grammar schools themselves, over 60 per cent of Bucks grammar school places go to pupils from private schools and schools out of county (many of which are also private). A child in a state school in Bucks now has a 20 per cent chance of getting a grammar school place; a child from a private school has a 50 per cent chance.

Second, disadvantaged children do even worse. Very few disadvantaged pupils go to grammar schools – we believe only two per cent of grammar school places in Bucks are filled by disadvantaged pupils at a time when 14 per cent are assessed as disadvantaged. Third, Bucks also has the second worse “attainment gap” in the country: ie. the gap between the performance of disadvantaged children and their peers.

Disadvantaged pupils in Bucks have only half the chance of getting good GCSEs as their peers. The selective system in Bucks is deeply unfair – not only to disadvantaged children but also to ordinary middle class children who go to state schools in Bucks. The response of the grammar schools is a smokescreen for continuing with ‘business as usual’.

Bucks grammar schools do not propose a fundamental reform of their intake. They merely propose to use a pupil’s eligibility for free school meals as a “tie-breaker” among applicants with similar exam scores. This will not go anywhere near tackling the problems. It will also be deeply unfair to those children turned down in favour of a disadvantaged child – perhaps one might cynically say because the disadvantaged child comes with a substantial pupil premium. The Labour Party in Bucks is committed to abolishing selective education and providing all the county’s children with an excellent education in their local schools, whatever their background or potential. In the meantime, if an entrance exam is to be used it should be fair.

By ‘fair’, we mean capable of being passed on the basis of the education provided to any child in a state primary, rather than a child who has been ‘11+’ tutored at a private school or otherwise. So far the grammar schools in Bucks have declined to provide us with any evidence about this new exam.

Mark Ferris, Secretary, Wycombe Labour Party