Over 150 comprehensive schools more socially exclusive than the average grammar, says Sutton Trust

New research published today by the Sutton Trust has found that there are 155 secondary comprehensives in England that are more socially selective than the average grammar school. 

The Trust’s Selective Comprehensives 2024 report finds that, on average, pupils who are eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) are less likely to attend a top performing comprehensive even if there is one in their area. This has not improved since 2016, and there are some indications that it has got worse. 

Looking at the top 500 schools by the Attainment 8 metric, on average these schools take 40% fewer pupils eligible for FSM than the average comprehensive. A third of this gap is attributable to the location of these schools in more affluent areas. Higher house prices in these areas pose a significant barrier to the families of disadvantaged children who are far less likely to be able to afford to live in these catchment areas.

However, living near a top performing school is not enough, with two thirds of the gap explained by unequal access within local areas. These schools have 30% fewer pupils eligible for FSM than live in the catchment areas they draw from, due to a combination of factors including parent choices and schools’ often complicated admissions criteria.

Religious schools are the most socially exclusive, as well as over-represented in the group of top schools. Almost all of the top 20 most socially selective schools are faith schools. Catholic schools continue to be the least representative of their catchments among top performing schools, followed by non-Christian religions, then by Anglican schools. 

The research also found that levels of social selection differed across the country, with the lowest number of top schools concentrated in some parts of the country with the highest FSM rates. The North East has the most socially selective top comprehensives in the country. Since 2016 it has overtaken London as the region with the highest proportion of FSM pupils, yet their high performing schools are also the most selective. In contrast, high performing London schools by the Attainment 8 measure were the least selective.  

Since 2016, the number of secondary schools under local authority control has halved, from 20% to 10%, with the vast majority of schools now controlling their own admissions. Among top performing schools, the proportion under local authority control for their admissions, which have been consistently shown to be less socially selective, has also dropped, while the proportion of converter academies, which are more socially selective, has increased.  

To address these issues the Sutton Trust says the government should review admissions code policies to require inclusion of pupil premium eligibility in schools’ oversubscription criteria, as well as including an assessment of fair access in Ofsted inspections. It says the government should also address financial barriers such as transport and uniform costs, which can be considerable.  

The Sutton Trust is also calling on school leaders to carry out fair access reviews, and take steps to change their admissions policies, as well as removing financial barriers to attendance at their school. The Trust will soon be launching a Fairer Admissions Campaign to encourage and support schools across the country to review and change their admissions policies. 

Sir Peter Lampl, Founder of the Sutton Trust and Founder of the Education Endowment Foundation, said: 

“The levels of social segregation across the school system are unacceptable. The poorest parts of the country are hit by a double whammy of having the fewest top comprehensive schools, which are also the most socially selective. This is deeply concerning. We need to urgently address this problem to create a more balanced system and raise the quality of all schools.  

“The government should review the school admissions code to ensure all state schools take a mix of pupils which reflects their local community, and provide disadvantaged pupils with a fair chance to access top performing schools. Alongside this, extra funding and resources, particularly targeted at the most deprived areas, will help to raise the quality of education where it’s most needed.” 

Ends 

Notes to Editors: 

• The Sutton Trust champions social mobility from birth to the workplace so that all young people have the chance to succeed in life. It does this through evidence-led programmes, agenda setting research and policy influence. 

• In order to assess the social composition of state maintained comprehensive schools in England, the researchers looked at the number of pupils eligible for Free School Meals and compared the profile of the pupils admitted to the school with those who could have been admitted. To do this, the researchers created school ‘catchment areas’, based on detailed data across three years of intake admissions (generally Year 7) looking at where schools have recruited from. They then compared the proportion of FSM eligible pupils admitted to a school’s intake over the three years between 2019/20 and 2021/22 with the proportion of FSM eligible pupils in those years in their catchment area. 

• The top 500 highest performing schools were chosen using a variety of different measures, including Progress 8 and Attainment 8, to test whether the analysis was sensitive to the performance measure used. 

• Progress 8 was introduced in 2016 and measures the progress a pupil makes from the end of key stage 2 (KS2) to the end of KS4. It compares pupils’ achievement – their Attainment 8 score (see below) – with the national average Attainment 8 score of all pupils who had a similar starting point (or ‘prior attainment’), calculated using assessment results from the end of primary school. Progress 8 is the main measure used in school performance tables. 

• Attainment 8 measures how well pupils do in key stage 4 across 8 subjects. Each grade a pupil gets is assigned a point score from 9 (the highest) to 1 (the lowest). Each pupil’s Attainment 8 score is calculated by adding up the points for their 8 subjects, with English and maths counted twice. 

• Grammar schools were not included in the main analysis, but on average accepted 9.2 percentage points fewer FSM pupils than lived in the areas they drew their pupils from. 155 comprehensives had gaps of 9.2 percentage points or higher. 

• What the Sutton Trust means by ‘socially selective’: The better performing schools on average have fewer FSM students in their intakes than are found in their local area. This phenomenon is what we refer to in this report as ‘social selection’. It is the result of a complex mixture of factors that will differ for every school and every catchment area, but in the majority of cases is likely to be related to school admissions policies and processes, parental decision-making and degrees of parental agency as well as geography, the social and cultural composition of communities and decisions by local authorities. It is not possible to unequivocally attribute any differences observed to one particular factor. 

• However, the statistics analysed in this brief, the 2024 report and previous reports show that social selection occurs, and it occurs differently and to different degrees among different kinds of schools in different areas. Furthermore, on average, top performing comprehensive schools reflect higher levels of social selection than secondary schools in general. This phenomenon is reflected in averages which means that not all top 500 schools or faith schools, for instance, are socially selective though the majority are. 
• The Sutton Trust’s previous Selective Comprehensives 2017 report can be found here.