PARENTS in England are faced with a choice when their children are old enough to attend secondary school. They can pay to send their offspring to a private school, which usually involves sitting an entrance exam. Alternatively, in some parts of the country, the child can sit an eleven-plus exam and, provided they pass, attend a grammar school. Grammar schools are publicly funded and tend to excel in league tables of academic performance. The overwhelming majority (about 90%) of British pupils, however, attend non-selective state schools.
Debate has raged for years over whether the impressive results of most selective schools are due to them providing a better education than state schools, or merely because they cream off the brightest and most privileged. According to research by Robert Plomin and Emily Smith-Woolley, both of King’s College London, the educational benefits of selective schools largely disappear once the innate ability and socio-economic background of pupils at selective schools are taken into account.
As they report in...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology https://ift.tt/2I81vXA
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