Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Department for Education and Skills (SA 41)
Q795 AND Q796
1. By what measure should the effectiveness
of admission arrangements be judged?
Efficiency, parental satisfaction and impact
on standards are three criteria important to local judgement about
the organisation of admissions.
2. Do the number of appeals suggest that the
school the parent places in second preference may not be one he
wishes his child to attend, but one which he finds less objectionable
than the school listed in third place?
You cannot deduce parents' motives from appeal
numbers; their precise reasons for appealing vary widely, according
to research on Admission Appeals conducted for us by Sheffield
Hallam University. This indicated that parents want what they
see as the best for their child, and to feel that they have done
everything possible to get it. Some will therefore appeal for
another school even though they know the benefit to be marginal
and either school would do. In any case, at present it is not
always possible to tell which school is the first preference,
as parents can apply to LEAs and schools which are their own admission
authority at the same time, without stating which school they
would most like. Parents can have as many appeals as they have
made applications and received rejections. Many make multiple
appeals. It is even possible to appeal for a place at your declared
second preference school, having been given one at your first
preference school.
If this is the case, can the statistics on parental
satisfaction provided in your memorandum be said to represent
the true picture?
For the reasons given above, the statistics
we gave in our memorandum are much more likely to represent the
true picture, than the appeal statistics. They come from the Sheffield
Hallam University and ONS research on parents' experiences of
choosing a secondary school. A nationally representative sample
of parents was asked about all the preferences they had expressed
and which school place they got; from this, the researchers could
tell that 96% received an offer of a place at least one of the
schools they had named, 92% from a school which would have seemed—to
the admission authority receiving it—to be a first preference.
Then they were asked to say which school they most wanted for
their child (their favourite school); 85% had received an offer
of a place at that school. The study also found that 6% of parents,
who had not got their favourite school, were satisfied with their
outcome all the same.
3. How are the interests of children whose
parents are unable or unwilling to invest in the school admissions
process protected?
The Code of Practice encourages LEAs to make
every effort to ensure that parents express a preference, and
understand the consequences if they do not. LEAs adopt a variety
of techniques. Examples include returning forms via the child's
primary school so that parents who haven't applied can be identified;
schools either take action themselves or notify the LEA so that
they take action. We have heard of LEA admissions officers making
home visits with application forms. For children approaching primary
school age, LEAs often notify local nurseries and put adverts
in doctors' surgeries and libraries to remind parents of the importance
of applying for a place. Under coordinated admissions, LEAs will
be responsible for allocating places to children they are aware
of, whose parents do not apply for a place; though the 1997 Rotherham
judgement requires that such places are allocated only after expressed
preferences have been dealt with.
4. What evidence do you have on the operation
of admission forums?
The decision to make Admission Forums compulsory
was based on the positive feedback we received from areas where
voluntary forums operated. This showed that they were an effective
way of addressing local admission problems and resolving disputes.
That has since been confirmed by the thematic report on "The
Influence of School Place Planning on School Standards and Social
Inclusion", published in October by Ofsted and the Audit
Commission, on which the Committee took evidence from David Bell
and Nick Flight. The report found that "Effective Admission
Forums have played their part in promoting cooperation, good practice
that will be extended by the implementation of the Education Act
2002." Admission Forums only became mandatory this year and
have a wide range of functions. It is therefore relatively early
days to assess their impact. Once the new arrangements have bedded
in we will undertake a full evaluation.
5. How do calculations of school capacity
relate to schools' permitted intake numbers?
Admission authorities should have had regard
to the school capacity indicated by the new DfES net capacity
formula, when they determined admission numbers for intakes from
September 2004. The formula gives an indicated admission limit,
but admission authorities may, following the statutory admission
consultation process, determine a higher or lower admission number.
If they determine a lower number they must publish a notice in
the local newspapers, giving the admission number indicated by
the formula, the admission number they have determined and the
reason for the lower number. They must also state that parents
may object to the Schools Adjudicators. Admission numbers are
part of admission arrangements, so other admission authorities
and schools have objection rights too. The governing bodies of
community and voluntary controlled schools may object to the admission
number determined by the LEA for their own school, if they disagree
with the number. Admission authorities should not admit above
their published admission number, unless there are exceptional
circumstances. Admission Forums should be monitoring whether schools
in the area are abiding by their admission limits.
6. Is a representative distribution of pupil
ability across a number of schools a desirable outcome of an effective
admissions process?
Local people are required to make judgements
about their priorities. For some schools, the distribution of
pupils according to ability is considered a desirable outcome.
Elsewhere, other factors have higher priority.
7. What are the merits of banding systems
based on geographical areas rather than on the applications to
individual schools? Why do you think the Code does not encourage
LEAs to develop this approach?
The Code does not encourage LEAs to develop
banding arrangements based on geographical areas because the law
no longer allows this type of banding to be introduced. It may
continue only where it was in place at the beginning of the 1997-98
school year and has remained unchanged since. It is difficult
to see how a banding system based on moving pupils around within
a geographical area could be consistent with parents having the
right to express preferences for an individual school, and get
a place there unless the school is full of higher priority pupils.
Fair banding—which ensures that the ability distribution
of those admitted to a school mirrors the ability profile of applicants
to that school—may do little to balance intakes across an
area, but is the only form of banding consistent with parental
preference. (We assume that Archbishop Tennison School whose Head
told the Committee that his school admits a higher proportion
of its high ability than of its low ability applicants, has banding
dating from pre-1998.)
8. Is the DfES aware of how many asylum seeker
children are currently living in England? How many of them are
not receiving full time education?
We do not require LEAs to provide information
on the number of asylum seeker children living in their areas,
and whether or not they are receiving education. However, section
14 of the Education Act 1996 gives all children living in England
the right of access to education, regardless of nationality or
immigration status.
Latest information from the Refugee Council
would suggest that there are around 82,000 children from asylum
seeking and refugee backgrounds in schools in England, with around
60,000 in London and the South East. It is not possible to differentiate
between these two groups of children or to say how many children
are out of school.
9. How are schools being supported to meet
the needs of asylum seeker children?
Schools receive funding to support the needs
of asylum seeker children in the same way that they do for all
other children on their school roll—through the Education
Formula Spending Share. In addition there is financial support
from two Standards Fund grants:
— the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant
which is mostly devolved down to schools so that head teachers
can use it in the most appropriate way to support underachieving
minority ethnic pupils and those who have English as additional
language needs. For this financial year the total available is
£154 million; and
— the Vulnerable Children grant—which
allows LEAs to allocate funding, based on local needs, to provide
coherent support across a range of vulnerable children, including
those with asylum seeking backgrounds. LEAs will be able to fund
services for these groups of children and to provide additional
ones to improve their access to education. The total amount for
this financial year is £84 million.
10. Who is the guardian of asylum seeker children's
interests?
If an asylum seeker child is with its parents,
then they have responsibility as guardian of the child's best
interests. In cases where a child is looked after by the Local
Authority, then the Authority has responsibility.
11. What are the educational arguments for
and against selection? What is the evidence on the educational
impact of selection across the whole ability range?
For several years now, various research has
tried to establish a link between pupils' performance and the
type of school attended, or the system in the area. However, there
is still no clear or complete answer to the question. It is always
difficult to agree on an exact comparator to the grammar school
pupils, and different researchers use different data and methods,
which others then question. The main conclusions of recent key
research are as follows.
Research by NFER published in 2001 concluded
that there was little difference between comprehensive and selective
systems in terms of overall GCSE results; with a slight advantage
for areas with low selection over fully comprehensive areas, and
a greater one for comprehensive over fully selective areas. When
all factors are taken into account, the most able pupils in grammar
schools seem to perform no better, and if anything a little worse,
than those in comprehensive schools. However, the least able pupils
performed slightly better in secondary modern schools than in
comprehensives.
Professor David Jesson of York University has
found that when the GCSE performance of pupils in selective areas
who do not attend the grammar schools was compared with that of
pupils of similar prior Key Stage 3 (KS3) attainment in non-selective
areas, the pupils in the selective areas lag well behind their
peers in the non-selective areas.
DfES value-added statistics, published in the
2002 performance tables, showed that grammar schools add more
value to their pupils at Key Stage 3, comprehensives at Key Stage
4 (KS4). However, benchmarking analyses by our statisticians of
the 2003 results suggest a fall in grammar schools' KS3 value-added
scores in 2003, when most level 8 and all extension papers were
withdrawn. We conclude that grammar schools' propensity to enter
pupils for the higher level papers was an important factor in
the 2002 results.
In 2000, a Department of Education in Northern
Ireland (DENI) report looking into the effects of the fully selective
system in the province found that the existence of the 11-plus
had a damaging effect on those pupils who failed to gain a place
at the grammar school, particularly those "borderline"
children who achieve a score very close to the pass mark. Children
arrived at the non-grammar secondary schools with a sense of failure,
and schools had to devote a great deal of effort into forming
a supportive environment to increase self-confidence. By contrast,
those arriving at the grammar school were significantly buoyed
by their success. It has been suggested that this "grammar
school effect" may be a contributing factor to the performance
of grammar schools at KS3. The DENI report also found that the
existence of the 11-plus had a backwash effect into Key Stage
2 (KS2) with a significant narrowing of the curriculum as schools
concentrated on preparing children for the 11-plus.
Earlier this year, the Secretary of State asked
OFSTED to prepare a report on standards in Kent—the education
authority with the largest number of grammar schools in England.
The report concluded that the LEA had a higher proportion of high-achieving
schools than the national average, but it also had a higher number
and much higher percentage of low-achieving schools than its statistical
neighbours. These conclusions agreed with a further study by Professor
Jesson, which stated that in Kent and Medway, both the grammar
and non-grammar schools performed at a lower level than similar
schools elsewhere.
Evidence from OECD's PISA Study suggested that
comprehensive school systems in industrialised countries produced
narrower social differences and, on average, better pupil performance
than systems which divided students in the secondary sector. However,
Professor Stephen Gorard of Cardiff University has considered
the PISA evidence and found that in this study, the UK has below
average differences on reading scores between rich and poor.
A report by the National Audit Office, "Making
a difference: Performance of maintained secondary schools in England",
published on 28 November, includes analyses by NFER of the performance
of various school types, including selective schools. NFER compared
value-added, adjusting for external factors shown to have a significant
effect and available from DfES statistics—such as percentage
of pupils with SEN or eligible for Free School Meals, pupils'
gender and ethnicity, and the degree of mobility/stability. They
concluded (on 2002 results) that pupils at grammar schools made
one third of a level more progress in KS3 and one GCSE grade less
progress in KS4.
12. Does the DfES hold information on selective
procedures in schools in 1997-98? If not, how is the Schools Adjudicator
to establish whether schools are conforming to the law?
We hold details of which schools were fully
selective at the start of the 1997-98 academic year, but not of
the exact details of individual admission arrangements for either
fully or partially selective schools. When an objection to partial
selection is made, the Adjudicator asks the school concerned to
produce their 1997-98 arrangements.
13. What is the evidence on the comparative
performance of children selected by aptitude and those who are
not?
This information is not collected by the Department
as there are no markers in our statistics for aptitude selected
children or aptitude selecting schools. However, as part of his
recent decisions on partially selective schools in Hertfordshire,
the Chief Adjudicator did lay down the principle that admission
authorities should monitor the ability distribution of aptitude
selected pupils to ensure that tests used do not select by ability
rather than aptitude.
14. If the ability to select by aptitude
is a valuable tool, why do so few schools seek to use it?
It is an available tool and some admission authorities
have found it useful. The law allows them to operate it under
certain specific conditions. We are not aware of any research
about why it is taken up.
15. Is it wise to launch the project for the
2005 admissions round without a pilot? Has the department expressed
concerns about this strategy?
Co-ordinated admissions schemes at LEA level
are not untried. They have operated effectively for many years
in Enfield and Hertfordshire (the third largest LEA in England
in terms of secondary schools and pupils). Birmingham successfully
operated a secondary scheme for 2003 intake. By 2004, a substantial
number of LEAs will be co-ordinating secondary admissions fully
(including Kent, the largest) or partially, eg using common application
forms and timetables).
The Pan-London admissions project goes further
by involving all London Boroughs in a common system. This is highly
desirable in the interests of parents, because of the particularly
high degree of cross-border travel to school in London. It is
a LEA-led initiative. Although the IT system to facilitate the
Pan-London project goes live across the city for the 2005 admissions
round, it is being piloted for 2004 admissions in eight London
boroughs—Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Hillingdon,
Islington, Newham, Richmond and Wandsworth.
We are supportive of the Pan-London strategy
which all London boroughs are signed up to. The project has been
well-planned and executed so far, and the aim of the pilots is
to identify and resolve any technical problems before it goes
live across London. The Project partners have ensured that there
is sufficient lead-in time to fully test the system and contingency
arrangements have been agreed.
2 December 2003
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