Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2003
DR BRYAN
SLATER AND
MR ROBERT
DOUGLAS
Q280 Chairman: What about introducing
more random elements into the allocation of places on first preference?
Would you be in favour of that? That has been mooted as a way
of ensuring that you have a broader cross-section of the community
in a school of first preference.
Dr Slater: It is defining your
community, really—because how big is your community?
Q281 Chairman: Or just in terms of
first preference: you take all the first preferences, you shake
them up, and there you have it. They are allocating places in
medical schools in Holland on the basis of lottery, after all.
Mr Douglas: I think that would
lead to . . .
Q282 Chairman: Insurrection?
Mr Douglas:—more confusion
on the part of parents.
Q283 Jonathan Shaw: Loss of parliamentary
seats, I would think!
Mr Douglas: It would be very difficult.
Very, very difficult.
Dr Slater: I do not think I could
argue for a random allocation of youngsters to schools. I think
schools work best when they are part of their local community.
That is important. The issue for me is how do we enable schools
to have that link with their local community without the negative
side that that sometimes can introduce, and enabling schools serving
communities where there are more youngsters with higher educational
needs still to be successful. That is the trick.
Q284 Mr Chaytor: Just following the
random question, what about the random allocation to schools who
are oversubscribed; that is to say, dealing with the additional
applications by lottery? That is to say you would have a basic
admissions criteria whereby the school recruited presumably from
its reasonably well defined catchment area, although anyone who
applied out of that catchment area would be allocated at random.
Would that be feasible?
Mr Douglas: I am not sure, actually.
Dr Slater: It certainly would
not work in Norfolk because the geography just is against that.
Many of the subscription criteria that enable out-of-area youngsters
to come in are related to high level need, so I am not sure about
that.
Mr Douglas: Again, I think that
would be difficult.
Jonathan Shaw: The system that we found
out about in Auckland seemed to work well in an urban area but
we had to challenge them on things like disability and children
in care. On the folk lore, do you know of popular schools that
were full, where they have a place that becomes available, which
will ring up the parent of a child who wanted to go to that school
but did not and went to a less popular school, and say to them,
"We've got a place now."
Q285 Chairman: There is certainly
evidence in your submission, Mr Douglas. You have said that is
a real problem in Leeds, people moving from school to school,
after the whole admission process, during term time. Does that
speak to Jonathan's question? Why were you concerned about that?
Was that a way of people bucking the system after the rules have
been set, as it were?
Mr Douglas: It may happen on a
very limited basis. I do not think it happens generally within
Leeds. Where a parent directly approaches a school, they may not
be given the full picture by that school in some cases, depending
on the type of child that that parent has. In Leeds, all casual
admissions come through the admission authority for all our community
schools, so there is not a system whereby a parent just goes to
the school and if the school has a place they are admitted. For
any casual transfer or in-year admission, they have to apply to
the admission authority, so we do perhaps have a stronger mechanism
for challenging that if that is happening.
Q286 Jonathan Shaw: But if the schools
are their own admission authorities, you would not know.
Mr Douglas: Yes, if the schools
are their own admission authorities, it is obviously more difficult,
and certainly within the voluntary aided sector there are examples
of parents having been turned away yet, I think, we believe there
is capacity.
Q287 Jonathan Shaw: Does anything
like that happen in Norwich?
Dr Slater: I have no direct knowledge
of that being a significant feature of what happens. But we cannot
rule out any aspect of human behaviour, can we?
Jonathan Shaw: If the system allows it!
Chairman: I want to move onto the admissions
process.
Q288 Mr Pollard: Could I first of
all congratulate you both on the submissions you have put through.
I thought they were unusually clear, direct and unequivocal. That
is a big statement—from all of us, I think. In Hertfordshire,
we used to have a letter attached to each of our admissions application
forms two or three years ago, and it was pretty clear where people
were in the social order of things because the letters written
by the more working-class folk were often not there and the chattering
middle classes did particularly good letters, so there was a bit
of selection going on. I am pleased to say that all stopped. There
is nothing like that in your area, is there?
Dr Slater: No.
Mr Douglas: No.
Q289 Mr Pollard: Thank you. Moving
right on, when a parent places schools in order of preference,
should all preferences be equal?
Mr Douglas: It is difficult, is
it not, where you are saying that parents have a preference if
all their preferences are equal? We have a system where we invite
parents to express five preferences—which personally I think
is too many.
Q290 Mr Pollard: Absolutely.
Mr Douglas: I think coordinated
arrangements will deal with that, in that we will have to come
into line with other authorities, but we have a system where five
preferences are expressed or can be expressed. The majority of
parents do not express five; they express normally three, possibly
four. Yes, I think they probably should be given equal validity
but there is an educative process that would need to be undertaken
in relation to parents' understanding of that because parents
clearly feel, certainly when they are challenging us, that they
have a choice. It is not a preference, it is a choice. If they
are given equal preference, then that clearly has to be understood
by parents in the way that they then seek to preference schools.
Dr Slater: I think we have thought
of this. We are just entering a system where we are going to have
three choices, in order: 1, 2, 3. We have had a system where we
thought it legal only to allow one first choice to be active at
any time, but we are now going to have 1, 2, 3. We think it practical
to have ordered choice, so that first preferences are clearly
first preferences, and you can deal with those on an equal basis
and then move to second choices and so on. That seems to me to
be in accordance with the parental right to express a preference—because
a preference is a preference, and I cannot see that expressing
a preference for every school is an expressed preference.
Q291 Mr Pollard: Are all parents
equally well placed to navigate the schools admission process?
Dr Slater: No.
Q292 Mr Pollard: How might we equip
parents to be equally well placed? Make the process simpler, more
straightforward, more transparent? Or have a choice of only one:
put this school down and that is it.
Mr Douglas: Preference is there
and there is nothing to suggest it is going to go away. No, I
do not think all parents can access it equitably across the board.
We try very hard. We publicise very widely, we publicise in community
centres. We actually attend school open evenings. Admissions staff
will attend at school open evenings and talk to parents at those
open evenings—and the majority of schools take us up on
that. So we try very, very hard to engage with as many parents
as possible, to explain what they need to do in order to access
the system and to be as successful as they can within that system.
But for some parents it is difficult. We do have a small minority
of parents who do not apply, they just turn up, because they think
it is automatic. They do not even bother applying. We have to
deal with that as a group of parents very late on within the process,
and those parents have no choice at all because by that time most
schools are full. So, no, there is not equality across the board.
Q293 Mr Pollard: Should we try to
row back from the choice and preference thing?—so that in
reality there is not much choice: where you live is where you
go to your nearest school, that is the practice.
Mr Douglas: That would be great.
For that to happen, every school needs to be a good school.
Dr Slater: This is what I was
reading on the train. It is our attempt to help parents. I am
sure most authorities do something like this. It describes every
secondary school.
Q294 Chairman: What is that document,
Dr Slater?
Dr Slater: It is: A Parent's
Guide to Secondary Schools in Norfolk: School Year 2004-05.[3]
Q295 Chairman: Could
we have a copy of that for our records?
Dr Slater: Of course. We will
happily supply this, and we have lots of them. Every parent is
sent one of these. We describe each school with its oversubscription
criteria. We say what the first year intake number is going to
be and how many applied for the school the previous year—so
whether the school is likely to be oversubscribed, and that parents
should therefore take that into account in the way they express
their preferences. We try to make this document accessible and
in easy language. Unfortunately it has a photograph of me on the
front, which can put people off! We have, in several languages,
an introduction at the front, and we can help people whose first
language is not English. But, clearly, to access and understand
this and to understand the rules is not straightforward. I think
the system is becoming more straightforward because of the Code
of Practice in arrangements for this forthcoming round, but, clearly,
some parents are at an advantage and some at a disadvantage in
coping with a document like this.
Q296 Chairman: What role do feeder
schools play in informing parents about choice and their ability
to access certain schools. Is that a role that is taken seriously
by the feeder schools?
Dr Slater: Yes.
Q297 Chairman: Are they encouraged
to do so?
Dr Slater: Yes, they are.
Q298 Chairman: Mr Douglas said that
people just turn up. I am surprised, in the sense that: Where
on earth were the feeder schools?—which were not trying
to reach out to the parents and saying, "Look, you have a
very important choice to make for your child. This is how you
should consider it."
Dr Slater: Yes, they do. We would
expect every school, knowing that a child was transferring, to
know that the child knows where they are transferring to and to
have access to the system. They would support them in doing that.
We communicate directly with each parent by giving them these
documents and . . .
Q299 Chairman: In a sense, why I
am asking that, Dr Slater and Mr Douglas, is that we all want
the situation where all schools are good schools, but we may have
a situation where all schools are good schools but they may have
different specialisms. They are all good schools but one may be
more right for one child than another. In a sense, this is a crucial
stage, is it not, coming up to the choice at 10 or 11, for teachers
to bring some appraisal of what the next phase for that child
would be and advise the parent.
Mr Douglas: Yes, I certainly think
there is a role. Could I perhaps clarify one point. I think where
the parents tend not to apply is more moving into reception rather
than to year 7. That is where the problem more likely occurs.
3 Note: A Parent's Guide to Secondary Schools
in Norfolk: School Year 2004-05, published September 2003 www.norfolk.gov.uk. Back
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