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School admissions should offer parents fairer choices

26 February 2007

Every school should be part of a local system of admissions, in order to give parents a fairer choice of school places and to help tackle educational segregation, according to new research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). ippr argues that schools can develop a strong individual ethos without needing to control their own admissions processes.

This week (Thurs 1 March) local authorities in England will write to parents with offers of secondary school places for this autumn.

ippr argues that Academies, Foundation schools, Trust schools and faith schools, have no reason to be their own admissions authorities, other than to select students by ability. Research shows that secondary schools which are their own admissions authorities are much less representative of their local areas:

• Faith schools which are their own admissions authorities are ten times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the LEA is the admissions authority.
  
• Non-religious schools which are their own admissions authorities are six times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than community schools for whom the local education authority is the admissions authority. 

Overall, secondary schools are twice as segregated by ability than they would be if they took the pupils living nearest to the school.

ippr’s report will also cite strong evidence of ‘peer effects’ on individual student performance and evidence that high levels of social segregation are associated with lower results overall.

ippr recommends:

• No school should administer its own admissions process – there should be an independent admissions administrator in every local education authority. Unless the new Admissions Code results in significant reductions in segregation by income and ability, schools should cease to be their own admissions authorities and local education authorities should take over this role instead.
  
• Fair banding by ability should be used as an oversubscription criterion for all schools, and in the longer term should apply not just within the applicants to each school but across wider local areas.
  
• Faith schools should be included in such banding arrangements, but could give priority to applicants on the basis of faith within each ability band.
  
• Local Admissions Forums should be required to produce a regular report on levels of segregation by income and ability in their local schools.
   

Nick Pearce, ippr Director, said:

“We need a system of fair choice for all parents and pupils. At the moment, schools that control their own admission arrangements are selecting their pupils, and our classrooms are more socially segregated than the local communities outside the school gates.

“The recent changes to the Admissions Code are designed to prevent schools from selecting, while still allowing them to control their admissions. The reforms are welcome but the new system is like asking pupils to mark their own essays, while providing them with detailed rules designed to prevent them from cheating. Schools can run themselves and develop a strong individual ethos without needing to operate their own admissions policies.

“Unless the newly strengthened Admissions Code significantly reduces current levels of segregation, schools should stop being their own admissions authorities. Local authorities should allocate places and in the long term, every local authority should move towards a system of ‘area-wide fair banding’. Parental preferences would be taken into account alongside the need to achieve a mixed ability intake of pupils at every school. Parents could then be confident that every school would have a fair mix of pupils.”

Notes to Editors

Fair choice – choosing a better admissions system by Sarah Tough and Richard Brooks will be published next month. 

A third of secondary schools (1,085 schools in total) are either Voluntary Aided or Foundation Schools, and are thus their own admissions authorities. In addition there are currently 11 City Technology Colleges and 46 Academies. Voluntary Controlled and Voluntary Aided schools usually have religious character and are often referred to as faith schools.

Schools are more segregated than their neighbourhoods. If all secondary schools were ranked by their share of the top 20 per cent of pupils (measured by their Key Stage 2 primary school results), then the school that is ten percent from the top of the distribution would have six times more of these high attaining pupils than the school that is ten percent from the bottom of the distribution. However, if all schools took their nearest pupils this ratio would be halved.

Proportion of pupils in top 20 per cent of achievement at the end of primary school:

Schools which are their own admissions authorities are much more unrepresentative of their local areas than schools whose admissions are controlled by the LEA. Schools can be ranked in order of how far their own pupils’ primary school results differ from the results of the pupils living nearest to them. Thirty eight per cent of all faith schools which are their own admissions authorities are in this top ten per cent ‘most unrepresentative’ category, compared to just 4 per cent of faith schools for which the LEA controls admissions.

Proportion of each type of school in the top 10 per cent 'most unrepresentative' in terms of share of high ability pupils, compared to local area:

In 2004/05 nearly one in ten (9.3 per cent) applications for a secondary school place resulted in an appeal by parents. Of these, two thirds (73 per cent) were heard by an appeals panel, with one third (36 per cent) of hearings finding in favour of the parents.

Under ‘fair banding’, schools would be required to admit equal proportions of pupils from each band of ability (after meeting their existing commitments to looked after children and children with special educational needs). Other admissions criteria could then apply within each band, for example parental preference, siblings at school, distance to travel and religious faith. Under ‘single school fair banding’, each oversubscribed school is required to accept an intake that is representative of the range of ability of the pupils who applied. Under ‘area wide fair banding’, all schools in the area would be required to accept an intake that is representative of the range of ability of the area as a whole.

Contact:

Richard Darlington, ippr media manager, 020 7470 6177 / 07738 320 645 / r.darlington@ippr.org

Matt Jackson, ippr senior media officer, 020 7339 0007 / 07753 719 289 / m.jackson@ippr.org