* Fifteen English LEAs are still fully selective, and a further 21 have some grammars

* There are none in Scotland and Wales, and the grammar school system in Northern Ireland is being phased out by 2008

* Margaret Thatcher closed more grammar schools than any other education secretary

* Around 60,000 children still sit the 11-plus each year

* Quotas were imposed soon after the exam was introduced in 1944 because girls were spectacularly outperforming boys

* It is estimated that, without these quotas, two-thirds of places in mixed grammars in the 1950s would have been taken by girls