Examination of Witnesses (Questions 712
- 719)
WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2003
MR STEPHEN
CROWNE, MS
CAROLINE MACREADY
AND MS
SUE GARNER
Q712 Chairman: Can I welcome Sue
Garner, Stephen Crowne, and Caroline Macready to our deliberations.
It is always a pleasure to have civil servants from our Department
meeting the Committee. We, as you know, have been conducting this
inquiry into secondary education for over a year now; this is
the last phase on admissions and then we are going to look at
the whole matter, so we are getting to the end of quite a long
and stimulating journey. This is the penultimate session, with
the Minister coming in December. So you are the Department's experts
on admissions. Would you like to say a couple of words?
Mr Crowne: Yes. Thank you for
inviting us; my colleagues Caroline Macready and Sue Garner are
experts, and I head up the section that deals with the subject.
That is not ducking any of your questions but Caroline and Sue
between them deal with both the policy and day-to-day casework
that we have on this, and have a great deal of experience in this
area. The only other point I wanted to make by way of introduction
is how important this work is for the Department because it is
about parents and children's sense of satisfaction with a key
part of the education process, and these are very difficult decision
that parents and schools have to make. We do invest a lot of time
and effort into examining how that process is working, and seeking
to improve it where we can. Clearly we could go on about some
of the key principles that underpin the system but I am sure those
will come out in the questions.
Q713 Chairman: Thank you, and perhaps
I can start. A lot of parents find the school admissions process
very traumatic because there is so much left to chance concerning
what year you are in, the cohort, whether a lot of children are
applying for that school that year or not, and it is a very traumatic
time for parents. Have any of you been through that?
Mr Crowne: Yes, indeed.
Ms Macready: Yes.
Q714 Chairman: And Sue has not?
Ms Garner: No.
Ms Macready: Those of us with
children have been through it.
Mr Crowne: Personally I did not
find it traumatic. I think I had a relatively simple choice locally.
The evidence that we see across the system is that experiences
do depend on locations, and there are clearly particular issues
around London where the evidence shows that levels of satisfaction
are rather lower, and I think it is important that we continue
to base our policy development on those precise factors that tend
to make more or less satisfaction in the system.
Ms Macready: And we also have
done our best recently in the admissions reforms of the Education
Act 2002 and implementing regulations and codes to ensure that
the process does not contribute to the stress felt by parents,
and we hope very much that developments like co-ordinated admissions
will make a complete difference to parents' experience of the
process.
Q715 Chairman: Do the three of you
work at all with Professor Tim Brighouse?
Mr Crowne: Yes, indeed. We liaise
closely with the whole London Challenge team and Tim's role is
providing leadership there. As I implied earlier, we do regard
London as one of the key issues in admissions, simply because
the evidence shows that levels of parental satisfaction tend to
be lower here. What is important from our point of view is to
fully understand the wide range of factors that bear on levels
of parental satisfaction. We start from the presumption, I think,
that the key to raising overall levels of parental satisfaction
is to ensure there are more good schools for parents to choose
from. That fundamentally underpins the whole strategy and, against
that background, we want to develop admissions arrangements so
that individual parents are not faced with the kind of traumatic
choice that some may have had to make, and to ensure that those
parents in particular who would prefer to send their children
to local schools for all sorts of very good and practical reasons
have a better choice available to them in every locality.
Q716 Chairman: Professor Brighouse
was quoted as saying the other evening that London parents in
particular got themselves in something of a frenzy over admissions
policy and that did not represent the true picture; that there
are plenty of good schools in London that give them a reasonable
choice. What is your view on that?
Mr Crowne: I think parents have
a wide range of views on what they would like and expect from
their schools. I think we, civil servants, should be very careful
of assuming that (1) all parents want the same thing and (2) we
know what that is. I am particularly struck by evidence that shows
that there are differences in preference: some parents prefer
local schools: other parents prefer schools with higher GCSE scores:
some parents prefer rapidly improving schools or schools that
they think cater particularly for their children and children
from the same kind of background. So I think the important thing
from our point of view is to ensure that parents have access to
information and, as I say, that we are putting effort into improving
all schools so they have a reasonable choice, but I do not think
we are in the business—and we should not be—of trying
to substitute our judgment as to what parents want for their children.
Q717 Chairman: Would it not be true
to say though that the difference between a major city, for example,
or anywhere, is that if you are a particular middle class professional
you understand the system, you have a much better way of using
the system to your advantage, than if you were from a relatively
disadvantaged background with less education, and that very often
the latter people end up with really no choice at all, because
even if they were awarded a place in a school that was quite pleasing
for them they may not be able to afford to travel to it?
Mr Crowne: I will ask Caroline
to come in on what the evidence shows about that because there
is some interesting evidence. The point I want to stress is the
one I made before: that different parents will look for different
things in a schools and I would hesitate before judging that certain
parents are choosing certain kinds of schools because they do
not know about or they are unable to access other kinds of schools.
We have an obligation, and so do local authorities and admissions
authorities, for ensuring that good information is available about
characteristics of all the schools, not just exam results but
a whole range of factors the parents want to take into account,
and the parents can access that information in a way that minimises
confusion and aids understanding.
Q718 Chairman: Just keeping on that
point, the inability to afford travel could be decisive, could
it not?
Mr Crowne: It could, of course,
and travel and other practical issues are undoubtedly significant
constraints on choice in the system, and are very practical constraints.
When we talk about parental preference we always have to caveat
that with the circumstances that individual families find themselves
in and their ability to access provision.
Ms Macready: I would like to come
back to the question of whether parents who are middle class or
with professional jobs are more likely to get what they want out
of the admissions system. I know you have received quite a lot
of evidence primarily from John Coldron on some research that
we commissioned that was published in June 2001 into parents'
experiences of secondary admissions, which clearly showed that,
among those parents, the likelihood of getting the school which
you applied for, which was your favourite among all those applied
for, did not vary with socio economic characteristics. That research
was able to draw the families in its sample from the Labour Force
Survey because it was done by the Office of National Statistics
for us, so they knew a lot about family backgrounds and they tested
for a lot of socio economic characteristics, and there was no
difference in the likelihood of getting your favourite school
between the different social classes, between owners and renters,
between two parent families and single parent families, employed
and unemployed parent families, which was quite encouraging. Now,
it may be that the aspirations of different parents differ and
that perhaps certain types of parents' aspirations are easier
to satisfy in the admissions process, but, as Stephen said, we
do not want to second guess them and say they are wanting the
wrong things: we should be pleased with that evidence that what
they want is on the whole coming out of the admissions process
for them. As you indicated, perhaps the levels of dissatisfaction
are greater in urban areas, particularly London, but those areas
often have quite good transport networks. The question of whether
parents can afford transport may be more likely to arise in rural
or semi rural areas.
Q719 Chairman: So, joining all those
threads together, what do you think, with all your experience,
should be the purpose of a school admissions policy?
Mr Crowne: I think the primary
driver ought to be parental satisfaction. We have adopted, over
the years, an engineering approach. The system is underpinned
by some key principles to do with localism and parental choice,
but in trying to improve it we look very precisely at how it is
operating and the evidence about parental satisfaction with that,
and to improve it where it seems to be necessary to improve it.
I think it is very important that we are clear about what you
can do through improving admissions arrangements and what are
much broader issues to do with the shape of the system and what
parents expect from it, and those are really about the quality
of the education, as I indicated earlier, and whether parents
feel there are enough good schools around. So it is very much
an engineering approach based on evidence, and trying to ensure
that at every stage we are building trust and confidence among
parents in the operation of what is essentially a local system.
This is why the system of adjudicators and admissions forums is
very important, because they put the onus quite clearly on resolving
local issues locally and co-ordinating admissions and so on and
the parents' experience in the process, given the sensitivity
of the issues, is as positive as possible. So those are the key
indicators that we look for.
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