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Selection isn't working
Diversity, standards and inequality in secondary education
By Tony Edwards and Sally Tomlinson.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Introduction
• This pamphlet takes issue with the current Government policy
of preserving and increasing the role of selection in secondary education.
• The evidence presented here indicates that systems of selection
do not help to raise standards and works against equality of opportunity.
2. "Selection is back"
• Despite promising "no new selection by ability", the Labour government
has presided over its continuation, and is extending new forms of selection.
• The Government has encouraged the private sector to replace the
abolished Assisted Places Scheme with its own self-funded programmes.
• The Government has effectively protected from abolition the surviving
grammar schools, which have a major impact on large numbers of children
in some areas of the country and are in fact now growing.
• The Government expanding numbers of church schools and specialist
schools, which are allowed to select their intake by interview and aptitude
respectively.
3. Selection and standards
• Contrary to the impression given by some opponents, the expansion
of comprehensive education has coincided with huge advances in educational
standards.
• The private sector's reputation is artificially inflated by the
conspicuous success of elite schools with narrow intakes and superior
resources.
• It is widely accepted that children of average and below-average
ability do better in comprehensive schools. But recent research comparing
grammar schools with comprehensives has questioned the benefits of selection
even for able children.
• National league tables suggest that selection depresses overall
standards within education authorities by polarising high and low-performing
schools.
4. Selection and opportunity
• Defenders of grammar schools emphasise their contribution
to social mobility, but in fact their pupils have always been disproportionately
middle-class.
• Claims that grammar schools increased working-class chances of
university education are hard to assess given huge changes in the working
population and the conversion of higher education from "elite" to "mass"
form.
5. Covert social selection
• The overall effect of parental choice through "open enrolment"
has been an increase of social segregation.
• Some poor families have been enabled to avoid what they saw as
poor schools, but the "active choosers" tend to be middle-class.
• The system introduced to police admissions has highlighted ways
in which competing schools screen applicants to improve league table positions.
• It is average inner-city schools that are most likely to lose children
from higher socio-economic backgrounds to other comprehensives and local
grammar schools.
• The most socially skewed intakes are in the most and least popular
schools. Ethnic minority parents in particular are less likely to get
their children into high-performing schools.
• All research confirms that a concentration of socially disadvantaged
children in unpopular schools makes improved performance harder.
6. Diversity, standards and opportunity
• Comprehensives vary in their ethos and priorities and have always
provided curriculum options on some basis of ability, interest and prospective
occupation.
• So far the Specialist Schools Programme has increased differences
between schools in intake and resources, without encouraging them to engage
in conspicuous innovation in curriculum or pedagogy.
• Initial claims made for the superior performance of specialist
schools have been questioned in the light of their prior funding and intake
advantages.
• The temptation for specialist schools to use their entitlement
to select 10 per cent of their intake on aptitude will increase as more
such schools compete for pupils in their local market.
• It is not at all clear that the Government has found a way of developing
types of school that are "simply" different without being unequal in esteem,
resources, and the chances available to their pupils.
7. Policy alternatives
• Practical steps towards a more principled and consistent secondary
education policy could include:
- a clearer stance on grammar schools and private assisted places
- less uncritical faith in the private sector
- entry to specialist schools entirely by "interest", not "aptitude"
- extending the range of specialisations, including "all round excellence"
- allowing schools to construct their own case for additional funding
- abandoning misleading and destructive league tables
- developing better measures of individual and school performance
- developing forms of "controlled" parental choice such as ballots
- more proactive intervention to ensure fair admissions practices
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