Selection  Key Facts

• 7 of the top 10 Local Education Authorities at GCSE are selective or partially selective.

• Northern Ireland, which has a wholly selective system, gets the best results in the UK. 72 % of pupils in Northern Ireland  got 5 A* - C GCSEs in 2007 compared to 62% nationally.

• At A level, entries from Northern Ireland easily outperformed the rest of the UK, with a third (33.2%) getting A grades, compared to 25% of English entries awarded grade A.

• At key stage 3 Northern Ireland pupils are ahead of English ones by 18 months or 20%. For high achievers, (level 6 or better) they outperform English pupils by 40% or more.

• LEAs delivering the top Key Stage 3 results:  (pupils scoring level 7 in English) 14 of the top 20 LEAs; 19 of the top 25 and 21 of the top 30 LEAs are selective or partially selective.

• 51% of GCSE papers from pupils at independent schools were awarded A* or A grades in 2007, compared to 15% at state comprehensives. For grammar schools the figure was 51.5%.

• Grammar schools do not only do well because they take in bright children; in the government’s value added league tables, which were devised to show how much a school boosted a pupil’s performance, regardless of their ability, 33 of the top 100 schools were grammar schools.

• In selective areas such as Trafford, it is not just the grammar schools that do well, the high schools (what we used to call secondary moderns) often outperform all-ability comprehensives. The average secondary modern for GCSE results does better than 700 all-ability comprehensives that’s 25% of all comprehensive schools. For GCSEs including English and maths, the average secondary modern outperforms 900 comprehensives – that’s a third of all comprehensives.  

• In value for money terms, comparing GCSE results with the amount of money spent per pupil, the top three authorities are all selective (Trafford is best value, followed by Buckinghamshire and Sutton) and 7 of the top 10 local authorities are selective or partially selective.