Wealth can have an impact on your success in school, according to a new report

Increasing the number of schools which select students by their ability (grammar schools) could have a damaging effect on equality in the UK.

What it means: Grammar schools are a really controversial topic in the UK. They're free, and tend to get better results than non-selective schools, but students have to take an exam to get into them, and lots of people say that those exams favour people from richer backgrounds.

In fact, according to a recent study, only a tiny proportion of children eligible for "free schools meals" – which is often used to signify children from poorer What's this?  backgrounds – go to grammar schools in the UK. In other words, the children from the poorest backgrounds aren't going to these schools, however 'able' they are.

Grammar schools have a reputation for high academic achievement, which is why a lot of people think there should be more of them in the UK. But according to the report, once you take into account that kids are more 'able' and tend to be from more privileged backgrounds, they don't actually 'perform' any better. These kids were statistically more likely to do well in school anyway.

Basically, the bottom line of the report is that separating kids by ability damages 'social cohesion', and doesn't actually do that much to further their education. "It's a bad policy", the author of the report said.