THE Government is refusing to release a report examining if rules should be changed to make it easier for parents to vote on whether to abolish grammar schools in Kent.

The independent report was commissioned and completed more than a year ago.

But the Kent Messenger Group can reveal its findings have yet to be shared with either ministers or even with the MPs who asked for it.

Now the Department for Education and Skills has rejected a request made by the Kent Messenger Group under the Freedom of Information Act to publish the full report, saying that to do so would not be in the public interest.

The report was commissioned in 2005 by the former secretary of state for education Charles Clarke, after MPs on the cross-party education select committee said the regulations on ballots should be scrapped.

To date, £1.7million of public money has been wasted preparing for votes that have never happened because a loophole - exploited by the Kent anti-selection campaign group STEP (Stop The Eleven Plus) - allows the ballot process for all the country’s 164 remaining grammars to be triggered by just ten people.

The money has been spent on grants to schools who are paid for compiling lists of parents who would, in theory, be eligible to vote if a ballot was ever held. Other costs have gone on administration and payments to the Electoral Reform Ballot Society.

The Government’s investigation was supposed to consider if there were any alternatives to parental ballots.

The Department for Education confirmed the report had examined if the ballot regulations were working as intended. It also disclosed the report had concluded "it would be difficult to find an alternative" to the existing arrangements.

More controversially, it also apparently rejected complaints from anti-selection campaigners that the rules, requiring 20 per cent of eligible voters to sign a petition demanding a ballot, made it virtually impossible for them to successfully stage a vote.

In a statement, the DfES said the report had concluded that it was "not clear...an alternative fair system of deciding eligibility to vote could be devised."

But it rejected the KM Group's request for a copy of the full report, arguing that it was part of "an on-going process of policy discussion" despite the fact ministers have yet to be presented with its conclusions.

STEP spokesman Martin Frey said: "It appears the government has had an investigation without bothering to talk to the people who have had first-hand experience of the ballot regulations.

"It is quite ridiculous for the DfES to consider changes in policy on that basis."