Top state schools are socially selective, Sutton Trust finds

3 Jun 13
England’s top comprehensives are significantly more socially selective than the average state school, Sutton Trust research has revealed.

The educational charity found that the average rate of free school meals in the 500 best-performing schools was 7.6%, just below half the national average figure of 16.5%.

In addition, almost all of these schools (95%) had a smaller proportion of pupils on free school meals than other schools in their local area. In almost two-thirds of the top 500 schools (64%), the rates were at least five percentage points below the local average.

The trust also found that good schools that have converted to academy status, known as converter academies, have a very different social intake to sponsored academies, which were established to improve results. There were 186 converter academies and 24 sponsored academies in the top 500 schools. The converters had a 'significantly low' free school meals intake, averaging just 5.8%, compared with 13% in sponsored academies.

Commenting on the findings, Sutton Trust chair Sir Peter Lampl said: ‘Who gets admitted to these schools matters because they are the ones most likely to attend the best universities and most likely to succeed in the top professions. They open the door to social mobility.

‘The schools in this study, by and large, are not using forms of overt selection. But they are exercising a form of social selection.’

Lampl said schools should award a proportion of their places randomly, via ballot, or introduce banding across the range of abilities to ensure a genuinely balanced intake.

‘Lower-income students do better when there is a mix of students of all backgrounds in a school,’ he said.

‘At the same time, independent day schools should be opened up by a state-funded system of open access, and grammar schools by a combination of outreach and fairer admissions.’

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