Peter Hitchens cites our Sutton Trust research in his Mail on Sunday column

Here’s why the quarrel about grammar schools never ends: it is not really about schools, but about what sort of country this should be.

Grammar schools stood for adult authority, for discipline, for tradition, for hard work first and reward afterwards, and for self-improvement.

They also tended to assume that boys and girls were different, and so educated them apart from each other. I like these things, but many don’t.

…..

Of course selection for any school has losers as well as winners. But we have selection in our supposedly comprehensive schools. It is mainly done through the secret privileges (fake religious belief, close knowledge of feeder schools etc) exercised by sharp-elbowed, well-off parents. How is this better than selection by ability?

A 2010 survey by the Sutton Trust found that comprehensive schools in England are highly socially segregated. In fact, the country’s leading comprehensives are more socially exclusive than the remaining grammar schools.

Read his Mail on Sunday column here

Hitchens earlier in the week cited our research in his Mail Online blog:

As we are about to find out, thanks to Theresa May’s feeble and dubious leak of plans to, just possibly, maybe, (but probably not) allow some more grammar schools to be created, without actually committing herself to creating them, the Grammar School argument is often extremely one-sided.

 

…

For example, this oft-repeated citation: ‘A recent study by the Sutton Trust found that, of the 164 grammar schools still open in 2014, 119 had fewer than 3 per cent of students eligible for free school meals; the national average across all state schools was 18 per cent. That is not a figure representative of a system that promotes radical social mobility.’

Read the full blog here.