Grammar schools are state-funded secondary schools that select their pupils by academic ability, tested by an exam taken at the age of eleven. They are free to attend. There are 163 left in England, concentrated in a handful of counties, and the question of whether there should be more is one of the most reliably explosive in British politics.
The tripartite system
The 1944 Education Act created free secondary education for all and divided it three ways, with children sorted at eleven by the eleven-plus examination:
- Grammar schools — academic, leading to university, for roughly the top 20-25%.
- Secondary moderns — for the majority, with a practical curriculum and, initially, no route to public examinations at all.
- Technical schools — intended for applied and engineering subjects, and barely built.
In principle this was a meritocratic reform, and for a minority of bright working-class children it genuinely was a ladder. In practice it labelled three-quarters of eleven-year-olds as failures, and the phrase “I failed my eleven-plus” was still being said with feeling by people in their seventies.
The abolition
From 1965, local authorities were encouraged to replace the system with comprehensive schools taking all abilities. Most did. The change was pushed forward under both Labour and Conservative governments — Margaret Thatcher, as education secretary, presided over the closure of more grammar schools than anyone else, a fact she did not advertise later.
Creating new grammar schools was banned outright in 1998, and existing ones can only be closed following a local parental ballot, which has almost never succeeded.
Where they survive
Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Medway and Trafford retain fully or partly selective systems, with pockets elsewhere. Northern Ireland has an entirely separate and largely selective system.
In these areas the eleven-plus still shapes childhood, and a substantial private tutoring industry exists solely to prepare children for it.
The argument
For: grammar schools offer a free academic education of a quality otherwise available only privately, and they have historically enabled bright children from poor families to reach universities their parents never could. Results at the best of them are outstanding.
Against: the evidence that they improve social mobility overall is weak. Children on free school meals are markedly under-represented at grammar schools even in selective areas, because well-off parents tutor for the entrance exam. And selection has a mirror: for every grammar school there are schools taking everyone who did not get in, and outcomes in fully selective areas are worse for that majority.
Why it keeps coming back
Grammar schools occupy a particular place in Conservative sentiment, associated with meritocracy, discipline and an older idea of state education. Theresa May proposed lifting the ban on new ones in 2016; the plan was dropped after she lost her majority in 2017.
The subject reappears every few years, and the debate is unusually personal — a great many people arguing about it are arguing about their own eleventh year.