There are only six areas in England where parents want new grammar schools and creating them would benefit the wider school population, a study says.
The Education Policy Institute modelled the impact of government plans to expand selective schools by looking at how 32,844 districts would be affected.
The think tank applied the government's conditions for allowing new schools.
The government called the study a crude attempt to second-guess the results of its consultation on new schools.
The researchers began by constructing a set of tests mirroring the conditions for new grammars set out in the government's White Paper, Schools that Work for Everyone.
These were that they:
- n should not be to the detriment of pupils who miss out
- n need to be in areas where there are sufficient numbers of pupils who could attend
- n should not undermine existing high-performing schools
- n are only in areas where parents want them
They found that broader education levels would be harmed if new selective schools were created in areas where more than half of highly attaining pupils could access grammar school places.
They then excluded any area that did not have at least 150 pupils with high prior attainment who lived within a reasonable travelling distance.
The researchers then excluded areas which already had high-performing non-selective schools, whose fortunes could be harmed by the introduction of new grammar schools.
