Why white children are not getting into grammar schools

[deanstreet]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/11/why-white-children-are-not-getting-into-grammar-schools/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_fb_photo_not-getting-into-grammar-schools

My kids went to grammar school oin an area that was so mono culturally white that it’s unreal (Essex) yet most of the pupils at theur grammar were British Asian. I think these families are just working harder. More focused. And as a result, deserve success.

@RichardOnslowRoper except that is MN, hate MIL, any input regarding partners is interfering, and a child attending a comp with 50% class disruption is a badge of honor (obviously brighter than spoon fed lot).
The biggest downfall of education is the lack of appropriate choices for disruptive students.

However when at a grammar school you have to run harder to keep up so it tends to increase knowledge.

I met a taxi driver from an Indian background who had both his children in tutoring for 11+ three times a week, for 2 years. That equated to the cost of a large mortgage, each month. His belief was that once in a selective grammar his children were on a solid education/career path so the significant investment was worth it.

Perhaps we need more grammar schools as demand is outstripping supply.

Yes, my daughter had one Indian friend at primary school and her parents told me (well before 11+ prep time) that they had bought books on English grammar, vocab, etc to improve their English so they could help with their children's homework.

Whereas there were definitely a few white British parents who were dropping their kids off at the same 11+ group tuition in year 5 who still said things like 'we was' and 'she were'. Left it far too late imo.

@RichardOnslowRoper problem is it is a White country, so the whites will "lecture" the non-whites about parenting and all these "emotional wellbeing" as if non-whites are emotionally harmful and inappropriate. While the whites play games all day, the Asian and Brown kids are studying and doing projects, X years later, the whites will then complain how the non-whites steal their jobs and society.

OP has been on threads about private school asking about how ‘brown’ the children are. I’ve reported that.

I think we need more grammars not fewer, genuinely think each town should have a couple.

@deanstreet I’m of the opinion coercive control, bullying and physical punishment are culturally acceptable and used to achieve grades. No value is placed on physical fitness or “mental health”.

@Bringemout more SEN provision NOT in mainstream. More trades school access earlier on smaller schools with more 1-1 attention.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Working hard to pass a test in order to get into a school you feel strongly will give you a better education is, pretty much by definition, valuing education.

I think also those who have actually taken the test know that for example vocab is very important. This is difficult to cram for and is actually likely to be easy for you if you have been reading at and advanced level for some time, you have to be able to decipher meaning through context, your comprehension has to be good, that takes time.

On the maths front, yeah asian parents won’t tolerate poor maths skills, again because everyone should be able to do maths for day to day life let alone anything else. I’d be horrified if DD couldn’t do reasonable maths, it would be akin to not being able to dress herself.

Maths elements are probably easiest to teach and english elements harder. The idea that you are teaching to the test is a bit if an odd idea because so much of an 11+ is just figuring stuff out as you go along. I had never done algebra before when I sat mine, but there it was in the paper, managed to figure it out enough to pass.

I don’t think these are as cramable as people would lead you to think on here. Yeah you can teach enough for someone to have a decent go at it but you aren’t going to take someone who is below average intelligence and tutor them into a grammar (which is what I think some people would like to believe). I think kids who are very smart will get in fine without tuition. Granted I did mine years ago (a lot less competitive) but I got in and I’m no genius.

There was an 11+ tutor on ama (I think) who said she could tell which ones would pass and which wouldn’t which I think is probably true.

I live in Surrey near some quite good comps. I briefly considered moving to be near the grammar I went to in London. But whereas people didn't have tutoring in my day or do much practice at home, I decided that things had changed drastically now. My kids had far more homework from primary school than I ever had and I didn't want to add tutoring to that.
I feel I made the right choice as they did very well at secondary school and I feel they benefited from attending mixed schools rather than single sex. They had a nice bunch of friends and were happy.
I don't think grammars are the be all and end all as some parents do. Obviously I'd have felt differently if all the other schools available were poor.

Wtf are you talking about, mine does sports every day because it’s good for her physical and mental wellbeing.

Literally every child in both mine and DH’s family has done sports as extracurricular activities, the ones who eventually stopped were never keen on it anyway. I’m in my 40’s and all of my siblings were on sports teams at one time or another.

Also I don’t hit my DC or use bullying. I’m actually deeply offended by that, no-one in my family thinks hitting children is ok. How dare you.

@Bringemout it is okay, it is a typical loser mindset, when they lose out on the academics and schools, they comfort themselves using "oh they are not happy, it is all fake, and blah blah blah".

My S Asian son played football for his university team and now picking up rowing at Cambridge. Admittedly my DD isn't sporty. But she did MUN, art and drama. She continues to paint in her spare time.

Nobody in my family has ever been physically disciplined. Not even me, and I am 54!

Meanwhile there was a whole recent thread of mostly white people being slapped around by their parents.I find your insinuations offensive and smacking of envy.

The Telegraph is probably of the opinion that no child in a Comp has parents who value and support their child's education and that no one who attends a Comp will achieve much in life. Which is rubbish of course. Getting into a Grammar school at 11 is great, but what they achieve later on is what really matters.

@Bringemout It’s not cramming. That tends to mean fairly late prep. I’ve known dc belong to hot housing schemes at 5. They are being tutored from age 8. It’s lengthy and it’s planned.

It is fairly unusual to see SE Asian dc rowing. At DDs boarding school, rarely did a SE Asian or Chinese dc do sport for the school. Music - absolutely. No idea why this happens. Boys love the cricket, but not the rugby. It’s ok to be different though. The Chinese dc had more noodles for snacks. So what? Why not celebrate differences?

Well if this is the case helpfully we’ll have DEI stepping in and levelling it up! I think these children are not only pushed and drilled but also the parents don’t necessarily value an all rounder - ie sport, music, drama (as important as academics imo).

Which county ?

I wouldn’t apply to put my white son in a non white school. So maybe it’s self exclusion as well?

The writers of the Telegraph strongly encouraged their readers to vote for Brexit, so I'm not sure I'd set much store by their own intelligence. Maybe they need tutoring themselves.

How do you plan to get DEI to level it when everyone has to pass the same test, so it's already level?

But is it equitable?

My sons are at a largely middle-class primary school in Liverpool, where most of the parents value education.
An issue here is that over half our schools are Christian. So while many parents can game the system by pretending to be Christian and attending church on Sundays, that isn't really an option if you're a committed Muslim or Sikh or Hindu.
But you can try and get your child into our one grammar school.
I think the Blue Coat is about a third white, a third Chinese and a third South East Asian. Which is an advantage as far as I'm concerned.
I suspect the point of this article is that Telegraph readers are still reeling from VAT on school fees and would like the government to create more grammar schools. Good luck with that.

I'm in NI where the whole country is a grammar system. My dc are in a grammar, as I and my siblings were and my DM and her siblings. In my ds' school there has been a noticeable increase in middle class English families (specifically London) moving here to access the schools, which are more or less free in comparison to what they would pay for private schools in England.
I'm white, but the non white pupils very much have a reputation as being very ambitious, high achievers. The % of these pupils on FSM is increasing as the number of asylum seekers has drastically increased in recent years. My ds is friends with a non white boy who has very challenging home circumstances; they are homeless and moving between hostels and B&Bs, but that has not affected his achievements.

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

This. The grammar system has always been accused of discriminating against the working class. The Chinese are the only ethnic group whose socioeconomic status does not affect their academic performance. Perhaps we can learn something from this? There is an active thread in AIBU now where a poster is saying that a mum who cooks from scratch, is invested in her dc's education and extra curriculars and is part of the PTA is "exhausting" and "not much of a life". We need to look at other cultures and their values and see what positives we can take away.