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

We mostly got rid of grammar schools for good reasons. Probably other historic threads on MN going into it.

re the article , their is a tendency in Anglo-Saxon cultures (UK, US, Australia New Zealand) to traditionally think that intellectual ability is largely innate (a child is born bright or less bright) whereas in many other cultures there is the idea that intellectual ability is more constructed by effort over time. (Robin Alexander’s book ‘ Culture and pedagogy’ researched this).

I think this is changing a bit over time as schools emphasise ‘growth mindsets’ etc.The whole grammar school shebang was predicated, however, on the Anglo Saxon (Alexander’s term) idea that there are a limited number of children born ‘bright’, waiting to be discovered who deserve to be taught a different curriculum (grammar schools did GCE/O levels and the secondary moderns limited students to a non-academic curriculum via CSEs).

I don’t understand why the state funds grammar schools when we don’t write off the majority of students as non-academic based on one test when they are 10-11 years like we used to. What is the point of them?

For parents who have been influenced by non-Anglo-Saxon cultures there might be more of an idea that you can achieve if you put a lot of effort in can. This can be very motivating for children and parents. There are also other motivating factors for immigrant parents as PPs have said.

Very good point. Not something I have ever thought much about. I would assume intelligence, or lack of it, is the result of a mixture of genetic predisposition and environment, but I have no idea how much of a role each of these two things play.

Also of course, intelligence is not that easy to define because it could include all sorts of areas - verbal reasoning, mathematical, emotional, spacial, kinetic, creativity, memory…… and probably much more.

Do grammars get extra funding?? How does it work? Are there more opportunities at Grammar and how is that paid for?

I don't believe grammars get extra funding. But some will have historic endowments from past pupils. And of course if you have a wealthier intake your PTA will be able to raise more money, if you have one.
Grammars also don't have to spend as much time and money managing discipline and social problems, as intake tends to be more middle class and motivated. Percentage of children with EHCPs tends to be lower, as does school refusal. You get anxiety, OCD, eating disorders and mathsy autistic children, rather than kids who can't read or speak English.
Grammars were discontinued for good reasons. Because you can't deny a child the right to do O Levels based on how they did in one exam. Because they turned out to sort by social class rather than ability. And because there are plenty of intelligent children who do badly on exams, whether because of dyslexia, ADHD, English as an additional language or social background.
And yes, honestly, there are all sorts of structural reasons why working class families send fewer children to grammars. We tutored DS ourselves, but it wasn't free. We paid for past exam papers online, Atom, Bond books. Opportunity cost of my time to supervise. Both me and DH have post graduate degrees, so we were able to explain how to do particular questions and talk about eg exam technique. It would have been even more expensive if we'd paid for tutoring.
We live in a warm, quiet house. We aren't working three jobs. We have stable, secure jobs and minimal stress. DS doesn't have to deal with insecure housing or food insecurity. We own hundreds of books. Most of the adults DS knows went to university and that's something he already knows he wants to do too (he wants to be an engineer). He goes to a middle class state primary which gets excellent SATS results. DS has plenty of structural advantages which have nothing to do with our parenting.
There was an interesting study done of a Native American reservation which built a casino, which meant every person living on the reservation immediately got several thousand dollars a year more than they'd previously earned. One thing they discovered was that children became more neurotic. They suddenly cared more about things like doing their homework, passing exams, being on time for school. Because their families hadn't previously had the luxury of being able to live further than hand to mouth. And as soon as there had that breathing space, they were able to plan for the future.

@CheerfulMuddler They get less funding. No pp funding to speak of. Pupils are funded in grammars as others are funded. Spending can vary of course.

Not sure many grammars have substantial endowments - maybe a few private ones, state ones - unlikely. Yes, grateful parents do cough up via fund raising and the wealthier the area, the more a school can raise. Rare for this to be used for teaching costs though.

O levels went out with the Ark. When O levels were an exam, they were hard. Some secondaries did offer them of course. All schools now offer GCSEs. Grammars have their place.

Just coming on to concur that grammars get less funding, not more.

I do not think it is race, i think it is person. I was asked to go from set 3 english to set 2 english, my set 3 english teacher said no and kept me in her class. My english has been terrible ever since.

There are more opportunities at the grammar school where I teach than at the other schools where I have worked, but few of them require funding. What they require is well-behaved and keen kids and well-qualified staff with lots of goodwill. When you are not fire-fighting bad behaviour or shit SLT, it's much easier to give more - trips, clubs, organising workshops etc.

It's a shame that the kids who are well-behaved and keen at lots of other schools are less likely to get such a lot of opportunities. My school has so many lunch time and after school clubs. Many are at least partly run by 6th formers. Lots of normal secondary schools have a shortened lunch hour to reduce behaviour issues, so lunch time clubs aren't really possible.

I don’t see anything wrong with children working hard to pass exams and gaining entry to somewhere selective based on those exam results.

I can see how it negatively impacts the poorest in our society though. It’s possible to be extremely clever but have parents who are not (so therefore can’t support, encourage or nurture your intellect) and who have no financial means to pay for someone who can. These kids, of all races, are left for the dogs.

According to research, minority ethnic children still do better than white counterparts who are in the socioeconomic bracket. The explanation is that it is cultural values and parental aspiration towards education that makes the difference.

Years back there was a channel 4 school swap type programme, where pupils from a struggling school in Derby swapped with those from an independent boarding school. One was a boy called Brett who was 'at risk' of leaving school with no GCSEs. He had a chaotic home life and his parents didn't even appear on camera. In school he was disruptive, had bad behaviour and felt school was a waste of time. Surprisingly, he loved the strict structure and routine of the new school and he was awarded a full scholarship to attend. With a lot of support he got GCSEs, A levels and a degree in business.

Yes.
Children with better supporting networks do better. Which is great for them but does beg the question, what are we going to do with kids who don’t have that? Because as we currently stand, they’re just destined to fail and then have children with the same obstacles.

Also worth pointing out that it costs a lot of money to emigrate. The refugees with settled status who are working as taxi drivers were probably chief executives in Syria. They pass those cultural expectations onto their children and grandchildren.
Obviously 'ethnic minorities' are a huge group which contains as many different types of people as 'white people' does. But I do think many of the ethnic minorities who make it to Britain (and their descendants) are a particular slice of their countymen.
I am selfishly glad that grammars exist because, parenting a child who's been bored through most of junior school, I can't imagine a better secondary for him. But looking at the stress induced, money spent and grief caused by living somewhere like Bucks, I do think they ought to be abolished. The negatives surely outweigh the positives.

I do a bit of work in grammar schools and I see this- the kids are mostly Asian, black with African sounding names and Chinese. Very few white young people.

I have lived abroad and there is definitely a more generalised attitude that education is very necessary and the way forward. There are many (white) families in the UK that think school is a waste of time and it's most likely these ones that are producing the children who are the statistics we are talking about.
The real solution for a quick fix would be to remove them from their families (like the above case of Brett Riley going to boarding school) but that is neither practical nor ethical. Long term - more money into communities to help children from birth, such as Sure Start and extra support in school. Parents who are unemployed (but not disabled) should get extra benefits for attending parenting classes/workshops and perhaps over time this will change attitudes. This is a thing in Sweden and has worked. I know Sure Start in my area no longer offers a drop off crèche service (which was very popular), you have to attend activities with your child, which has a very low attendance rate and is mostly BAME immigrants attending, so again, not going to benefit the white working class children. At the end of the day you can lead a horse to water, but can't make it drink.

Elite education should not be exclusive to wealthy kids. That's the whole point of Grammar schools.

For a long time British PMs were exclusively state educated. Then they closed the Grammar Schools and since Major state educated PMs have been something of a rarity. Says it all.

Keir Starmer and Theresa May went to grammar school.

The main advantage of state grammar right now is better staff retention and less PE style army loonies in SLT commanding others around. They wouldn’t get away with it with long established highly educated staff. They are mostly there to conserve what already works/rather than some sort of narcissistic reinvention of the wheel. But a lot of facilities are collapsing just like in any other state school unless they can privately raise funding from alumni/parental contributions/PTA events.
Wilson’s built an amazing music block with a generous alumni contribution to keep music alive. QE has an overseas satellite it has leant its brand too to raise funds.

Spoke to one of DCs teachers who recently joined grammar. She absolutely loves it and says it’s a world away from the comp she taught in because the parents are so much more supportive and the kids so much more motivated which makes teaching a joy rather than babysitting and firefighting.

In an area near me, I read an article saying that a couple of local grammar schools have around 50% Asian children in the lower year groups in an area where the population is around 10%. However, many of those children travel up to 100 miles to attend the schools each day.
While anyone can technically do that, it does make it very hard for bright local children without much money to compete against wealthier or maybe brighter kids from much further away.
I'd be for grammar schools for local kids, ethnicity irrelevant. And ideally I'd just like good to excellent state schools for all.

Nope. In our closest town there are two crap comps that have been crap for decades. Most parents use the many school buses to get their kids to the much better comps in the next two nearest towns. So your idea doesn't work in entirely comp towns as it is. The two crap comps are very undersubscribed, and the comps in the other two towns are constantly expanding. So rather than "improving" the crap comps, "competition" just means better schools in other towns expanding (and lots of school buses!!). The two crap comps just get all the kids from families where the parents don't care about education at all and just lazily send their kids to the closest comp, and that "couldn't care less" attitude is embraced by their kids too, hence the poor behaviour, poor results etc.

The grammar I know of get less govt funding not more. BUT, they have a very active alumni group and parental involvement organising various fund raising events, such an annual gala, running the school "shop" selling uniform, stationery, gifts, etc, social events, car boot sale and table top sales, etc and an active charity subsidiary. By keeping in contact with alumni, they do get a lot of regular donations once the leavers have got established in their new careers and earning. There are regularly quarterly newsletters, plus email marketing lists, plus active social media etc., all to keep the awareness of the school among parents and alumni. All of that is done entirely by volunteers, no involvement from school admin/teachers at all. They also had big fund raising campaigns for buying "big" things, like new sports equipment, repairing the leaky roof in the library, a 3d modelling machine, etc. There was an entire ethos of keeping parents closely involved in all aspects of the school and keeping contact with leavers. Lots of leavers go back occasionally to do career talks etc.

By contrast, I never heard a thing from the crap comp I went to, the moment I left I was forgotten and I forget the school. Whilst I was there, there was zilch in the way of parental engagement other than the usual rushed parents evening - no PTA or anything like that, no "events" where parents were invited, no fund raising. It was as if the school deliberately avoided any contact with parents or leavers, so they missed out on huge potential help, support, finances, etc.

I think that's the difference really. Grammars and private schools really seem to want to involve parents and leavers to create more of a long term community that they can tap into in so many ways.

Starmer went to RGS which I know well and went private during his time there.

But yes, you're right about May. So what? I said rarity, not unheard of.

The government has this political apparatus called Children Services to enforce the white parenting mentality on everyone, so that can be used to slow down the "academically successful" brown and asian population by calling them "abusive".

I went to grammar back in the early 1970s when everyone sat the 11+. It was an excellent school with a very high percentage going to Oxbridge. We had no non-white pupils at all, but did have a German and a couple of Spanish pupils. The independent schools in my town only targeted the 11+ failures as you couldn't buy a better education than the highly-rated grammar.

My own DC went to grammar after passing the 13+. It was extremely competitive and I was warned that she was unlikely to get to grammar from her current school so we home schooled for the year prior to the exam. As well as sitting the 13+, she also applied for scholarships at private schools as a fall-back but as a single mother I would have really struggled to find the fees without significant bursaries. The school was excellent but being in the south-east, in an expensive catchment outside London, it was mainly white rather than diversified. By contrast, my nearest private school is now mainly Asian with just a small handful of white pupils.

Getting a bus to another town costs hundreds of pounds a term. That's not in everyone's budget.
It also means older siblings can't pick up younger siblings from school and provide childcare which is something (rightly or wrongly) many families rely on. It means you can't dress your kid in hand me downs from friends but have to buy a whole new uniform. And you have to have the cultural capital (and English skills) to know which schools are better and that your kids can get into those better schools. Not everyone has that.
If nobody you know has gone to university, it's harder to imagine that as a possibility for your kids. University is also expensive, especially if you include the opportunity costs of your child not working in that time.
These are really complicated social problems. It's easy to blame it on 'lazy parents' but real life is much more nuanced than that.
And even if you did hypothetically make every school excellent, there are still a limited number of top grades given every year, a limited number of university places, a limited number of graduate jobs. Ideally those places would be evenly distributed amongst the social classes. But when social inequality exists, sharp-elbowed parents (myself included) will use their cultural capital to get their kids the best opportunities.
If you really want equal opportunities, I'd argue the best way to get that is to reduce social inequality full stop.
Which is not an easy ask.

Actually, we don't need more grammars. We need no grammars at all, but instead have flexible streaming in mainstream state schools. It's so not on; a child's future being decided upon at the age of ten. More so, surely having these elite schools full of the hot-housed offspring of overzealous parents is not what grammar schools were set up to do, which was provide an opportunity for naturally bright children to thrive in an environment where they would not be held back by their swot heckling peers.