Ministers’ plans for new and expanding grammar schools to set up “feeder” primaries will effectively lead to academic selection at the age of 4, a headteachers’ leader has warned.
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT headteachers’ union, said the requirement to establish feeder primaries in low-income areas - outlined in this month’s schools Green Paper - would merely create greater competition among parents for Reception places.
“What they are saying is they will allow grammars to set up their own prep schools,” Mr Hobby said. “What you then swap is this nasty business of selection at 11 with selection at 4, which is even less reliable and fair.”
The policy to create feeder primaries was listed in the government’s Green Paper as one of several conditions to be placed on the expansion of grammar schools to ensure that they “contribute in a meaningful way to improving outcomes for all pupils”.
‘Devastating effect’
Education secretary Justine Greening said the plans were about “putting the interests of ordinary, working-class people first” and that grammars would make England a “truly meritocratic country”.
But Mr Hobby said the expansion of grammars across the country would have a “devastating effect” on the children who did not get in to selective schools.
He feared “significant wash-back” into primaries as a result of the changes, with parents pushing schools to prepare their children for grammar entrance tests.
“The impact on primaries will be that certain parents will choose to coach and tutor their children for those tests, adding to the already strong burden on key stage 2 children,” he said. “Some parents will demand primary schools prepare children for the exams, which will distort the ethos of those schools.”
Andy Fawkes is headteacher of Linchfield Community School in Deeping St James, which is in a selective part of Lincolnshire. “Parents will put an enormous amount of pressure on primary schools in areas that do become selective,” he said. “It will be something extra for those schools to deal with.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Grammar schools provide stretching education for the most academically able, regardless of background.
“That is why we intend to allow new grammar schools to open where parents want them, with strict conditions to make sure they improve the education of pupils in every other part of the system.”
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