15,000 pupils pass the 11-plus but fail to get a grammar school place

The remaining 6,100 or so children were turned away because they did not meet other entry criteria as closely as those who were offered places, such as the distance they live from the school.

A small number of pupils who applied for and sat more than one test will be included in the figures.

They do not include children who have narrowly missed a place at "superselective" schools, which only take the top performers and do not have a pass mark.

If a similar number of eligible pupils are being rejected from the other 108 grammars in the country, it would mean that nearly 20 more establishments would be needed to meet the demand for places from about 15,000 extra students.

Bob McCartney, the chairman of the Grammar Schools Association, said: "These statistics demonstrate the great demand for grammar schools compared to the small number of places available and the unfairness to children who are qualified to fill them but are denied a place.

"The Government continues to blatantly ignore parental choice. Its approach is based on political motivation and not the pursuit of education excellence."

New Government admissions rules introduced last month make it easier for oversubscribed schools to expand or even establish "overflow" or "satellite" schools nearby.

However, there is no new capital funding for buildings and it is unclear whether a "satellite" grammar school would contravene the 1998 legal ban against the setting up of new selective schools.

Wallington High School for Girls, in Sutton, received 1,400 applications for 180 places and had to turn away more than 300 pupils who passed the 11 plus.

Barbara Greatorex, the head teacher, said: "I just think it is a shame that the opportunities that grammar schools afford are not more widespread. Most grammar schools are so oversubscribed that they take as many pupils as they possibly can but without capital funding, they do not have the space to take more."

But the admission rule changes have offered renewed hope in some areas which do not have grammar schools or have an acute shortage of places, such as Sevenoaks in Kent.

Plan are under discussion for existing grammar schools in Tonbridge and Tonbridge Wells to establish campuses for the 1,100 Sevenoaks children who travel about nine miles everyday to grammar schools in other towns.

Michael Fallon, the Sevenoaks MP, said: "The cost and time spent transporting these children is a huge waste and there is growing demand for grammar school places beyond that, including a big new housing development in north Sevenoaks.

"Parents, primary schools, head teachers are increasingly vocal about the need and the county council is supportive.

"We are actively exploring the establishment of a campus of two existing grammars and there is definite interest."

A Department for Education spokesman said: "We're giving all schools the freedom to offer more places but they will not be getting money from the department to expand."

Ministers are instead funding new free schools. An extra ￡600 million to build 100 more free schools will be announced in Tuesday's autumn statement.

How to set up a Free School

Ironically, the West London Free School has become such an instant hit – over 1,000 children have applied for our 120 places next year – that my own children might not get in. I hope they do, but it will have been worth it no matter what. I’ve written an international bestseller, performed in a one-man show in the West End and co-produced a Hollywood movie, but nothing I’ve ever done has come close to producing the sense of satisfaction I feel about having started this school. I thoroughly recommend it.

The Chicago Way

The only way to win the propaganda war is to be every bit as energetic and relentless as your opponents. In some cases, more so. Every time a damaging story about your proposed new school appears in a newspaper or on the internet, you need to respond immediately. Create a Google alert with the name of your school so you know about any story the moment it appears.

I remember sitting down one Sunday lunchtime to tuck into a roast with my wife and children when I discovered that Fiona Millar, ex-adviser to Cherie Blair, had just written a post for an anti-free-schools website accusing my group of trying to throw some handicapped children out of their special school so we could move into the building. Not true, obviously, but I had to get up from the dinner table that second, go to my garden office and spend the next two hours composing a “comment” to leave beneath her piece that rebutted every element of the story. If I hadn’t done that – and if I hadn’t used the phrase “false and malicious”, indicating that the piece in question gave me ample ammunition to bring a libel suit against anyone repeating the allegations – the story could have ended up in the following day’s Mirror.

Whenever I talk to free-school proposer groups on this topic, I like to quote a bit of dialogue from The Untouchables: “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way – and that’s how you get Capone.”

The Elevator Pitch

As soon as you go public with your proposal to set up a free school, you need a pithy one-sentence description of your school that captures its essence. The Reach Academy in Feltham, due to open in 2012, announces itself on its website as follows: “Our vision is that all children, regardless of background, benefit from a first-class education and realise their full potential.” The Free School being set up in Newham by Peter Hyman, a former strategy adviser for Tony Blair, goes with: “School 21: For success in the 21st century.”

These are good examples of what’s known in the business world as the elevator pitch: a brief, punchy description of your idea that conveys its essence in 30 seconds or less, as if you were a post boy who found himself in the lift with the CEO and had that long to present him with your career-changing idea.

Once you’ve decided on your elevator pitch, get it out there. Make sure that all the members of your group memorise it and trot it out at every available opportunity.

This is how you win a political argument: you repeat the same thing over and over again. It’s boring – it’s one of the reasons politicians often give the impression of being robotic – but you’ve got to do it. Your enemies know this and they’re good at it.

On Message

Often you’ll find that your opponents come from some well-oiled political machine – a union, a local authority – where orders are given and discipline is imposed. Most Free School groups, by contrast, are reluctant to organise themselves too hierarchically. Plus, no one’s being paid. You can’t ring up a voluntary worker in the middle of the night and order him or her to have a piece of work on your desk first thing tomorrow morning. He – or she – will tell you to get lost.

Nevertheless, your group will need to respond immediately to a negative publicity hit and there won’t be time to convene a meeting of the Steering Committee. Not only that, but you need to make sure that the lines going out to the media are consistent – that everyone stays “on message”. The best thing is that just one person be responsible for communications – and no one apart from that person ever give a quote to a newspaper, talks on the radio or makes any media appearance in connection with your school.

The Adonis Encounter

From the outset, I decided to make the campaign for the West London Free School as public as possible. I wrote about it whenever I could and never hesitated to appear on radio or television to talk about it, often engaging in heated debates with Fiona Millar. The upshot was that our group, and I in particular, became the focus of national opposition to the free-schools policy, with the leaders of all the main teaching unions singling me out for criticism – not to mention Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and God knows who else. Whenever I bumped into other free-school proposers during the set-up process, they would often thank me for being their “human shield”.

Not everyone on my steering group thought this was the right approach and they weren’t afraid to tell me so. They worried that people might think the West London Free School was just one big ego trip for its publicity-crazed founder or, worse, a Tory school. Often the Labour and Lib Dem voters on the steering group were just freaked out by being under attack from people they thought of as being on the same side as them. When I hit back, branding our opponents “loony lefties”, they were embarrassed. They thought this Punch-and-Judy style of debate would mean our school wouldn’t be taken seriously.

I began to doubt whether I’d made the right call myself, and when I appeared on Any Questions? with former education minister Lord Adonis, I decided to seek his advice. This was just after the last general election.

At bottom, I said to him in the car afterwards, the anti-free-schoolers and I all wanted the same thing – good local schools for everyone – so couldn’t we engage in a constructive dialogue about how best to achieve that?

Adonis gave me a look of withering contempt, much like the look Prospero gives his naive daughter in The Tempest when she expresses admiration for the rogues that have washed up on his island.

“They’re not interested in 'constructive dialogue’,” he said. “Don’t you get it? If you extend any sort of olive branch to them they’ll see it as a sign of weakness and move in for the kill. I dealt with exactly the same people – the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Anti-Academies Alliance, the NUT – for most of my ministerial career and, believe me, they would rather stick pins in their eyes than admit they have common ground with someone like you.

“Their attitude to Free Schools is the same as their attitude to Academies: they won’t rest until every last one has been razed to the ground.”

I decided to stick to my guns and I’m convinced it was the right strategy. The acid test was when we advertised for staff in the Times Educational Supplement. Would any teachers want to work at “the Toby Young school”? The answer was yes. We had more than 600 applicants for our eight full-time teaching positions. We’ve never had any problem attracting pupils, either. At the time of writing, the West London Free School has approximately 10 applicants for every place.

The War Room

If you want to know how to mount an effective political campaign, rent The War Room on DVD. It’s a documentary that takes a behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The star of the film is James Carville, Clinton’s campaign manager and a supreme master of the dark political arts.

Among Carville’s litany of pithy phrases, one of my favourites is the battle cry he always utters at the beginning of a campaign: “Follow me if I advance, kill me if I retreat, avenge me if I die.”

I’m afraid that’s the kind of martial attitude you’ve got to take when it comes to dealing with your opponents. By all means try to give the impression that you are reasonable people who would gladly engage in “constructive dialogue” with them if only they were a little less ideologically hidebound – but only as a tactic to discredit them. In reality, don’t give an inch. No retreat, no surrender. It’s a battle to the death and there can only be one winner.

Free school facts and figures

24
Number of free schools that opened this September, most of them primary (for now)

87
Number of free school applications approved by Government for opening 2012 and beyond (plus 8 already at planning stage)

1,400
Number of Academies (operationally the same as free schools but either created from existing state schools or set up by organisations rather than volunteer/parent groups) as of now

1,463
Number of existing schools seeking academy status

70% of free schools... are in the 50% most deprived areas in the country
Michael Gove to Parliament, October 10

Why my school will stay open during the strike

Class action: teachers are among public sector workers on strike over pensions?Photo: EDDIE MULHOLLAND

Striking teachers will today subject children and parents across Britain to serious inconvenience. I think they’re wrong to do so. For the past 10 years, I have been head teacher at Woodberry Down primary school in Hackney, and I am executive head of four schools in total. Woodberry Down will stay open today. The other three schools in the group will not, because of union action. That is a shame. Striking should be the last resort for teachers, and we should think carefully before returning to the days of downing tools at the slightest pretext.

This strike demonstrates a lack of realism among teaching unions. Someone has to pay for public sector pensions – we’re all living longer, the economy is stagnating, and teachers ought to understand these facts.

I worry, too, about the example being set to children. I remember the teachers’ strikes in the Eighties. It was fun to be out of school for a day, but we had no respect for those who went on strike. We felt that the proper teachers were the ones who were still there, teaching. We were annoyed, actually. I remember that distinctly. I recall thinking: if it’s that easy to remove yourself, by going on strike, do they actually need all the people in the building? I wouldn’t want to make myself disposable in that way.

Other aspects of the strike disturb me. I’ve heard some staff saying they’re not marching, but are going out “for a jolly” today. I hope that’s not the case. We get 13 weeks off a year and, while lots of us work long hours, taking a free day to go Christmas shopping is an insult to parents. What happens if a mother, forced to take a day off work, bumps into a teacher out lunching today? What message does that send?

The unions have their own agendas. For example, I appeared on breakfast television with Christine Blower, the leader of the NUT, and she criticised synthetic phonics, a proven system for improving literacy. It was only afterwards that she said she had never seen synthetic phonics being taught in a school. Here was the head of the country’s largest teaching union passing judgment on something she had not seen. This suggested that the ideology was more important than the reality. You have to use the teaching methods that work. Synthetic phonics is one, but Christine Blower hadn’t bothered to see how it worked.

It’s the same with Sats. They’re not perfect, but if you don’t have tests, you cannot tell which schools need help. And yet, when I sat in on Lord Bew’s review of Key Stage 2 tests, I heard union after union demanding an end to Sats without offering any credible alternative. They seemed prepared to jeopardise the educational wellbeing of children – since external assessment such as Sats is essential if you are to have a system of accountability that lifts standards in schools.

This is the paradox about the unions: on the one hand, they’re very Left-wing and want money poured into deprived areas, but, on the other, they reject the measures that do some good for children in poor communities. Sadly, some unionised teachers have lost sight of why they came into teaching. Trying to improve failing schools, I have faced obstruction from militant teachers who have become so bound up in ideology that they have forgotten the children. Very often, the unions won’t tolerate anything that threatens their beloved “work-life balance”.

What makes the schools I run successful is that we have teachers who realise that, especially with pupils who start from a low base, you need to go the extra mile. That’s where vocation comes in. The drive and energy that you need to inspire children will never fit into the NUT’s rigid work-life policy. To make education work you need dynamism, not people who sigh, shrug their shoulders and moan.

Compare teaching with the medical profession and you’ll see that there’s a different ethic there. There’s an ethos of service. We have lost that in teaching, and that is a shame. Either what we do matters, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, and the children can genuinely afford not to be at school for two or three days a year, then why don’t we just increase the holidays?

It all comes down to this: a school exists for one thing, to educate children. Whatever fight you have with the system, engage in the fight in a way that doesn’t undermine you and let down the pupils.

Today’s strike is a symptom of a culture in parts of the educational establishment that is quick to complain and slow to find solutions. I can understand why people are concerned about pensions. Clearly what issues there are need to be resolved. But I think a lot of that concern has been whipped up by unions determined to criticise whatever the Government does. And these unions are determined to live in a world where reality, including financial reality, does not exist.

I didn’t come into the profession for the money. I trained as a teacher because I wanted to improve people’s lives. This is what we try to do in our federation of schools. I love teaching. In fact, I’m looking forward to going into work today. By coming to school I will have helped to make a positive impact on children’s lives, and on their chances of finding fulfilment and reaching their potential – something I would not be able to do standing on Victoria Embankment waving banners.

Greg Wallace is executive principal at Best Start Federation of schools

Getting tied up in knots over great school uniform debate

He adds: “It is much less oppressive and more natural to question personal clothing in an environment where children are learning what is appropriate to wear. As long as the conversation is framed around responsibilities and sensitivities to others, the children are more likely to choose wisely when out of school. Checking ties are tightly tied is a waste of time if the same loosely tied students know very well how to dress up with a tie for a wedding.” He believes that children need, and welcome, the opportunity to express themselves and what they wear is a key way to do that.

Keith Budge, headmaster at famously non uniform-wearing Bedales, agrees and says that even in a uniform-wearing school; students will forge ways – usually rebellious ways – to do this be it via wrong-length skirts, tattoos or piercings. His opinion has precedent: Bedales was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley, who believed in educating through “head, hand and heart”, and the school the first fully co-educational one in the UK in 1898 - and didn't ask pupils to wear a uniform back then either.

The Good Schools Guide says that the vast majority of parents prefer a uniform, “so long as it’s not overly fussy or expensive”. What do the children think? Mr Lashbrook says that even the lower sixth at Oakham who – unusually – still wear uniform, “wear it with pride” and Sevenoaks says its pupils like wearing a uniform “because they don’t have to decide what to wear in the morning, and there is no possibility of a fashion show scenario with pupils judging each other by what they wear.”

Maya Wanelik, a GCSE student at Oxford’s non-uniform wearing Cherwell, lobbied her headmaster and local MP for the introduction of a school jumper. She felt it would promote an identity and help improve behaviour as the children would be associated with their school. But she also felt that “some children get bullied because they wear designer clothes and other children are jealous, but children who don’t have designer clothes can get bullied too”.

While London-based educational psychologist Annie Mitchell agrees with Maya that a uniform is important because it prompts a sense of belonging at school, Mr Budge argues that “the strength of the close-knit community at Bedales is proof that uniform is not required to promote a sense of belonging” and he elaborates, “there are other less superficial and more meaningful ways to create a sense of community and identity, and Bedales does this through the unique relationship between students and staff that is based on mutual respect and long-held school traditions that strengthen bonds, such as the handshaking ceremony at the end of assembly when the teaching staff line up to shake the hand of every student and wish them goodnight.”

As a parent it is the brand snobbery that Maya refers to that concerns me most; if your child feels compelled to wear designer labels at school, the cost of a formal uniform begins to look attractive.

Mr Budge disagrees: “Staff, students and visitors often comment on how refreshing it is that the students have their own identity when it comes to clothing rather than promote labels. Some of our students make and wear clothes that they have produced in our textiles design department and others seek to create their own look by customising clothes bought at charity shops. Our students are refreshingly non-judgmental when it comes to fashion and are very accepting and even embrace people’s differences in taste. I would even go as far as saying that it would be considered 'un-cool’ here to judge someone because of their attire.”

Eanna O’Boyle remains unconvinced by the argument that wearing a uniform avoids fashion competition and that those who are unfashionable are bullied. “I think it’s of great importance that children actively learn to celebrate the balance between having some freedom of clothes, finances, sensitivity to what is good taste, and exploring who they are.”

Pitched together, students who represent both uniform-wearing and non-uniform-wearing schools present interesting arguments.

Karla, who wears a uniform, says her school represents a broad cross-section of society, one which might not gel without a uniform and, she observes, given the chaos of some of the students’ lives, a uniform provides welcome order.

Marcus, who doesn’t wear a uniform, says that being granted the responsibility to wear what he likes extends to developing responsibility in other areas.

That the jury still seems to be out on uniforms is evident: one psychologist I spoke to said it was not as easy as assuming that just because a child wore a uniform, he or she learned more effectively. There were “many contextual factors” at play.

My youngest daughter has attended both uniform-wearing and non-uniform-wearing schools. Her prep school did not wear a uniform; her secondary school does; as far as I can tell she appeared to learn as well in each environment. In prep, that she did not have the faintest idea what Hollister was did not matter, at secondary school it does. But she is glad to wear uniform now because “we don’t have much space for home clothes at school, if we didn’t have a uniform I would have to have a lot of clothes which would mean two things: less space and everybody would know I don’t own any designer brands”.

So she is happy to wear a uniform. But she is even happier it does not dictate the colour of her under garments.

This article was originally published in the Telegraph, Weekly World Edition

A-level results: private school pupils monopolise top grades

Pupils from private schools were more likely to gain top grades in this summer's A-levels, according to the Department for Education.?Photo: PA/Gareth Fuller

Data published today shows almost 32 per cent of teenagers in the private sector gained three A or A* grades this summer compared with just over eight per cent in mixed-ability state schools.

At the same time, fewer than one-in-20 students taking exams in further education colleges and one-in-10 candidates from sixth-forms were awarded a string of top grades.

It puts private school pupils at a huge advantage when applying for Britain's elite universities which increasingly fail to consider candidates unless they score at least three As.

Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, branded the figures “astonishing” and suggested thousands of children were being left behind.

"We must close this gap - which is why we are driving up teaching standards across the profession and developing a world-class curriculum for all," he said.

He added: "A-levels are a key stepping stone towards higher education and future careers. It's only right that we make sure our qualifications match the best in the world and keep pace with the demands of employers and universities."

Figures published by the Department for Education represent the first full breakdown of A-level results for 381,181 teenagers in England.

According to data, 12.8 per cent of students – almost 48,800 – gained three As nationally. This was the same as last year.

Numbers increased to 31.8 per cent among independent school pupils, compared with 27.5 per cent in selective state grammars, 9.8 per cent in sixth-form colleges, 8.3 per cent in comprehensives and 4.7 per cent in FE colleges.

Boys scored more top grades than girls for the second year running, the figures show. Some 13.1 per cent of boys scored three or more As, compared with 12.5 per cent of girls.

The Government has already indicated that top universities will be able to recruit unlimited numbers of students who gain at least two As and a B next year.

According to the figures, almost 45 per cent did so in independent schools, compared with just under 15 per cent in state comprehensives. This could further tighten private school pupils' grip on sought-after university places.

Data also showed a drop in the number of students gaining at least two A-level passes – from 94.8 to 92.7 per cent.

This comes amid claims that grade boundaries have been toughened up this year following warnings from the Coalition Government against “dumbing down”.

Universities with the lowest proportion of state school students

The Courthauld Institute of Art, an independent college of the University of London based in Somerset House, last year accepted a majority 54.1 per cent of students from private school backgrounds. 45.9 per cent of those that won a place to study art and art history were from state schools, against a national average of 88.8 per cent.

Picture: Edward Herdwick / Alamy