The balance of admission of poorer students in Englands’s grammar schools has lowered.
The government released the funding of £50m to make sure that this category of children will have access to proper education. But despite the funding and the influence of ministers towards schools to diversify their admissions, the rates of poorer students in grammar schools have fallen.
On the other side of the argument are campaigners and headteachers. They argue that the policy of diversifying the admissions of poorer students access to more education is not working. They criticize the government’s funding plan.
13 of 16 funded grammar schools provided data about this matter. This year, only 7.5% of the quota was offered to the disadvantaged children alongside with free school meals. The number shows a slight downfall since the last year (7.6%).
A whole 28% of the secondary school students would be able to fall under the category of pupil premium. But the low percentage of 7.6 and 7.5 fell the campaigners in rage, calling the situation a “scandal,” considering that the data comes after the government’s initiative and funding to give poorer children access to the education.
Initially, the government’s proposal included £50m expansion fund. The funding went to selected 16 grammar schools whose identities were shared later in that year.
But as the data, mentioned above, shows, only a small amount of poorer children got a chance to apply to grammar schools.
Further analysis showed that only 9 of the chosen 16 schools are working on future plans to increase the number of poorer children for the year 2020.
How does the initiative to grow the admission of poorer students look from the outside?
Even though the government is planning to continue this initiative, campaigners argue that their plan is not working and that they should abandon it. They think that:
The £200m allocated for grammar school expansion is a scandalous waste of money.
Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, argues that the money funded in this project is wasted, instead of treating on real issues, such as teacher shortage, real-time funding cuts, etc.
Following the education funding crisis in England, a lot of experts have commented on the government’s initiative to expand the pupil premium program. They say that grammar school development is untimely when the state school sector is suffering from real issues.
