Wednesday 2 February 2022, 16:00-17:00

Room 224 - Graham Kerr Building, 82 Hillhead Street, Glasgow  G12 8QQ (please note the change in venue)

Are grammar school pupils over-represented at prestigious UK universities?

Pupils from more advantaged social class backgrounds and certain ethnic minority groups continue to be overrepresented in grammar schools in England (e.g. Bolton, 2017), and are among the highest achievers nationally at GCSE (e.g. Coe et al., 2008), but this appears to be due to the academic and social selectivity rather than to any ‘school quality’ effect (e.g. Gorard and Siddiqui, 2018). Similarly, the high rates at which grammar school pupils attend more prestigious UK universities is explained by prior attainment and social background characteristics, rather than being a direct school effect (Sullivan et al., 2014, using BCS70). However, this latter evidence presenting a null effect of grammar school attendance on access to prestigious UK universities relies on data for those who came of university-age towards the end of the 1980s, immediately prior to the second wave of higher education expansion (Boliver and Swift, 2011) and the subsequent proliferation of university league tables (Boliver, 2015). We draw on data for a more recent cohort (Next Steps and NPD data) who came of university-age in a context of a 50% higher education rate and a highly prestige-stratified university system. Our results do not show an advantage for grammar school pupils to attend prestigious UK universities, regardless of their social background, sex and ethnicity. Thus, our empirical evidence does not support the usual claim in policy debates that grammar schools provide better chances to ‘high’ ability pupils from all backgrounds.

About the speaker

Dr Queralt Capsada-Munsech is Lecturer in Sociology of Education at the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Queralt’s main research interests are educational inequalities, social stratification and youth transitions from education to the labour market. She is currently part of the Editorial Board of Sociology, the flagship journal of the British Sociological Association (BSA). She has been involved in the NORFACE funded LIFETRACK research project, a comparative European research project focused on the long-term consequences that sorting processes in secondary education have for social inequality in later stages of educational and employment careers. Previous to that, she had also been involved in the EU H2020 YOUNG_ADULLLT research project, focused on lifelong learning policies tackling young adults in vulnerable situations in their transition from education to the labour market.

First published: 24 January 2022

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