Partially selective schools are of two types: • A
bilateral school contains both grammar and non-selective streams, with the two groups of students taught separately. Bilateral schools were originally part of the
Tripartite System in more sparsely populated areas unable to support separate schools. Most of those existing today were established in the 1970s in a few areas retaining the Tripartite System. • Partial selection was introduced in some
grant-maintained schools during the final years of the
Conservative government led by
John Major. Grant-maintained status was introduced by the
Education Reform Act 1988, and gave such schools control over their own admissions. Circular 6/93 permitted these schools to select up to 10% of their intake on the basis of ability or aptitude in music, art, drama or sport. Circular 6/96 permitted more selection. By 1997, over 40 schools were selecting up to 50% of pupils. In 1997 a
Labour government was elected, with a policy of abolishing partial selection.
David Blunkett, then
Secretary of State for Education and Employment, said in December 1997: However, the
School Standards and Framework Act 1998 permitted selection of up to 10% by aptitude for certain subjects for which a school is a
specialist college (section 102), and also permitted the retention of partial selection that existed prior to the 1997 entry, provided that the proportion selected was no higher than that in 1997 (section 100). The 1998 Act also created schools adjudicators, empowered to rule on objections to school admission arrangements, including partial selection. This mechanism has steadily reduced both the number of schools using selection and the proportion of partial selection at the remaining schools. These schools often also give preference to siblings of current pupils, filling the rest of their places using distance and/or faith criteria. The sibling criterion is particularly controversial, as in combination with selection it often severely limits the number of local children admitted. In response to these concerns, the initial draft of a revised schools admissions code proposed to ban sibling criteria in schools that selected more than 10% on their intake. After many protests, the admissions code as published in February 2007 protected siblings of current students, and permitted schools to give priority to siblings provided that "their admission arrangements as a whole do not exclude families living nearer the school." This phrasing was removed in the revised Code published in January 2009. A late amendment to the
Education and Inspections Act 2006 amended the 1998 Act to limit the proportion selected to the lowest level at any time since 1997. This forced four Hertfordshire schools to lower their proportion of academic selection from 35% to 25%. ==Partial selection today==