To say that grammar schools are competitive would be a gross understatement: with more than 30 candidates for each place at some schools, getting a place for your child now requires military-style levels of strategy and ruthlessness.
There are stories of children as young as six being privately tutored for the 11+ exams, and families applying for schools hundreds of miles away (some as far away as China). The average house price in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, which is in the catchment area of several outstanding grammar schools, now exceeds £1.1m.
Grammar schools are no longer just about serving local talent; they are a national – and increasingly international – race for an elite educational opportunity. One that is, crucially, free.
Given that a private secondary education now costs on average £150,000, it is unsurprising that parents are planning and paying years in advance to ensure their child can go to an academically selective school.
A consequence of the exclusivity of grammar schools – aside from premium postcodes and pushy parents with pointy elbows – is that they take very few white working-class pupils (or white pupils at all).
For example, one school in north London, which had nearly 3,000 applicants for its 104 places, took only one white British child in 2024-2025. A nearby school has only two white British pupils in a year group of almost 200.
This has been the case for quite some time. A 2016 report by The Sutton Trust found that disadvantaged Indian pupils were four times more likely than disadvantaged white British pupils to attend a grammar school. Disadvantaged Chinese pupils were 15 times more likely to do so.
Some cultures value education more than others
Many have been quick to blame the under-representation of white children in grammar schools on anti-white discrimination, but the idea that entrance is awarded on the basis of some sort of ethnic favouritism is nonsense.
Firstly, grammar schools are often located in quite demographically diverse areas. Secondly, students sit the same test regardless of background. For most schools, there is no pass threshold, so places are simply allocated in descending order of exam mark (although around two thirds of grammar schools have policies prioritising candidates from disadvantaged homes or on free school meals).
Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, is right when he says it is “dangerous to compare ethnic groups as if they are like-for-like ... and these differences could be white British pupils being more likely to come from lower-income households and to live in areas where education has not consistently translated into opportunity”.
However, here’s the quiet part said out loud: the ethnic make-up of grammar schools is a reflection of the academic aspirations of different parents, and the fact that some cultures value education and the importance of exam results more than others.
As I have written previously, education is not a zero-sum game, and white working-class students underachieve in spite of others’ progress, not because of it.
There are too many bright pupils for too few places
If we want to help white working-class pupils, we need to stop blaming hard-working students from other backgrounds, and realise that parental support, engagement and ambition are the distinguishing factors here, not some DEI conspiracy.
To put it simply, white working-class students cannot go to grammar school unless their parents live in the right areas; put them forward for the test, and – with the help of schools – give them appropriate support and encouragement.
As a country, we also need more grammar schools in the first place. There are far too many bright pupils for too few places, all of which are concentrated in a few counties (where I live, in Oxfordshire, there is not a single grammar school).
Grammar schools are oversubscribed because parents are disillusioned with the other, increasingly restricted, choices on offer, caused by successive governments substituting excellence for mediocrity by automatically assuming that “selection by ability is bad”. Yet, in an astonishing rags-to-riches success story, London Academy of Excellence received 60 Oxbridge offers this year.
Finally, we need to acknowledge that certain groups seemingly monopolise grammar schools because parental aspiration is not equal, and grammar school places are not equitable. Our knee-jerk reaction might be to blame these schools’ admissions policies or insist that these schools take more white British children, but we need to encourage ambition, not penalise it.