Kent grammar decision is 'a bad day for education', says head of nearby school

The announcement of England’s first new selective school in decades is “a bad, sad day for education”, according to the headteacher of an all-abilities academy in Kent that now faces losing many of its more academically able students.

Mary Boyle is principal of Knole academy, a non-selective school in Sevenoaks, Kent, where a new grammar school, billed as an annexe to Weald of Kent girls’ grammar nine miles away in Tonbridge, has been approved by the Department for Education.

Boyle said she feared the new outpost, admitting girls only until the sixth form and due to open in 2017, would cream off many of the top-performing local students who would otherwise attend Knole.

“It’s a bad, sad day for education in general, not just for this school,” she told the Guardian. “People will look at our school, and see it’s an all-abilities school, and if their child is of top ability they’ll now be more likely to try and get their child into the grammar school. Certainly in Kent, there is something very magical about this word ‘grammar’, which I can’t really fathom.”

Like many critics of grammars, Boyle notes the fact that such schools tend to attract an excessively privileged intake, with few qualifying for the pupil premium, a government funding bonus that assists more disadvantaged youngsters.

“For me, it harks back to this 1950s, ‘give a working-class child a chance’ kind of thing,” Boyle said. “But we all know now that grammar schools don’t just select by ability, effectively they select by money as well.

“That’s very clear when you look at the percentages of pupils who get the pupil premium. For Weald of Kent it’s something like 1% or 1.5%. It’s 21% [at Knole academy]. You’re selecting by the ability to coach children through the 11-plus. You’re selecting by expensive uniforms, the ability to pay into a voluntary fund, all of that.”

The sheer numbers of children who travel some distance to Weald of Kent grammar is obvious by the parade of buses parked in a layby outside the gates at home time, many there to take pupils to Sevenoaks.

Similar scenes occur daily at Judd, the boys’ grammar in Tonbridge. Among those who make this daily trek are the two elder sons of Andrew Shilling, who are aged 15 and 12.

“It means they have a very long day,” said Shilling, who has campaigned for a grammar school in Sevenoaks, the family’s home town. “They leave at about 7.30am to get there for 8.40am, and they get back home at about 4.50pm. It’s over an hour of travelling each way. For a lot of the year they’re leaving in the dark and coming back in the dark. It’s pretty hard for them.”

Just under half of all secondary-aged children in the town go to grammars elsewhere, Shilling said. “Every day that’s about 1,500 kids who travel from Sevenoaks to schools in Tonbridge or other places. Loads go on buses, which are really packed, with children sitting on the floor or standing up. It’s not ideal, or completely safe.”

The genesis of the battle began a few years ago when Knole academy consolidated from two sites to one, he explained: “There was suddenly a very large, vacant school site in Sevenoaks. At that point we thought: wouldn’t it be good to have a grammar school?”

While Kent county council and Weald of Kent characterise the campaign as purely a one-off expansion, Shilling, a 46-year-old accountant, said there was now pressure for a boys’ grammar in Sevenoaks. He added: “Our campaign is not finished. This is only half the answer.”

David Bower, chair of governors for Weald of Kent, said he accepted some of the criticism about grammars, but did not think it meant the “annexe” should not be built.

“It’s an extremely difficult one, and as a board of governors we obviously want to provide the education we do to as wide a group as possible,” he said. “But the county council is working as hard to make the 11-plus as tutor-proof as possible, and we will be looking to see if we can make exceptional provision for children from less affluent areas.”

Bower hailed the decision by the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, as “very good news”, even if, such was the political sensitivity, the news was briefed to newspapers before the school was told. “The first we heard of it was the press telling us. That did disappoint us a little bit,” he said.

Roger Gough, Kent county council’s cabinet member for education, said about 1,600 students were travelling every day from Sevenoaks to Weald of Kent and other grammar schools anyway.

He said: “There’s been strong desire from families in the Sevenoaks area to see grammar provision there, and we believe this is being delivered through the expansion of an existing school.”

Bower also stressed this point, saying the school saw the move as strictly an expansion, not a green light for new grammars: “As far as we are concerned, we have submitted this bid on the basis it is an annexe to an existing school, because Sevenoaks doesn’t have a selective school. We were quite clear about that, and I think the Department for Education wanted to make sure we were quite clear about that. What might happen nationally will happen.”

However, Boyle said she believed the decision could open the floodgates to new grammars nationally, leading to a loss of status for schools such as Knole.

“The problem is that people read results, they don’t read progress or value for money, or the wider educational and learning experience,” she said. “People assume that a good or outstanding school is one that has 100% of pupils getting five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths. But what they don’t see is that if you’re taking an all-ability intake, you’re not going to have this. You’re looking after all children.”

She also believes the social selection aspect of grammar schools is an active, if largely unspoken, attraction for middle-class parents: “Some more affluent parents who live in Sevenoaks town don’t really want their children associating with those who have a little bit less money. For the more enlightened parents that’s not the case at all. But there is certainly an element of that.”