Watford Grammar School for Boys has some novel admission criteria. The issue has been very sensitive in Watford ever since the Commission for Racial Equality condemned both the boys’ and girls’ grammar schools for operating what was known locally as the 35-plus. Which is to say the oversubscribed schools admitted pupils partly on the basis of written submissions from parents. This was not to the liking of the many Asian families living nearby.
But that is in the past. The bright Conservative world of today means that the grant-maintained Grammar School for Boys, which was recently a comprehensive despite its name, can now select half the pupils on straightforward academic grounds.
Rather less straighforwardly, as it explains in a recent public notice, it will also give priority to “Pupils with brothers who are attending Watford Grammar School for Girls.”
