| In this inquiry we have focused on the process of school admissions; how individual children are allocated a school place in secondary school; how their parents or carers express their preferences in relation to this allocation and how disputes that occur during the process are resolved. We have been particularly interested in the impact of the Government's Codes of Practice for school admissions and admission appeals and the work of the Office of the Schools Adjudicator.
Quality of schools
Central to the debate about school admissions is the question of what parents want when they set about deciding their preferences for their child's school. All parents want a place in a good school for their child, although parents have varying definitions and draw on a variety of information sources in making judgements about schools. Our inquiry has focused on the legal, regulatory and administrative arrangements for school admissions. However, these are second to the overriding necessity to ensure that all schools are good enough. While we believe that schools are improving and that these improvements are reflected in pupil attainment, it is clear that not all schools either are, or are yet perceived to be, good enough.
Parental preference
Legislation has consistently and rightly given priority to parental preference and it is evident that successive governments have particularly valued this principle in the school admissions process. However, the system of school admissions that has resulted is one in which it is all but impossible for parents, particularly in urban areas, to exercise their preference with any degree of certainty about the likely result. Far from being an empowering strategy the school admissions process, founded on parental preference, can prove a frustrating and time-consuming cause of much distress in the lives of many families.
The School Admissions Code of Practice
We support the Government's aims: for greater fairness, coordination and parental preference in the allocation of school places. However, the Government's attempt to realise these aims through a system based on guidance rather than regulation means that it can have no assurance that its objectives will be widely met. This is disappointing. Fairness in public policy should not be a matter of luck but a matter of course. Schools need to be able to respond to the needs of their local communities but this should not be at the expense of the Government's broader aims of social inclusion and equity. We recommend that the School Admissions Code of Practice should be supported by revised regulations. In particular, acceptable admissions criteria should be identified and clearly defined in regulation or primary legislation along with specific guidance on the appropriate manner of their implementation.
Interviews
The Code of Practice seeks to prohibit the use of interviewing as part of the admissions process. The rationale for ending the use of interviews is that, intentionally or otherwise, they enable judgements to be made about the child's prior attainment as well as the family's social class, educational and professional background and level of support for their child's schooling. We welcome the end of interviewing as part of the maintained secondary school admissions process although, once again, we regret that this clear statement of good practice represents only guidance to which admissions authorities must have regard and not regulation with which admissions authorities must comply.
City Technology Colleges are not bound by the Codes of Practice and, by virtue of this, may make admissions arrangements without regard to the guidance contained within the Codes. One of the ways in which these publicly funded schools deviate from the good practice guidance set out in the Codes is by their use of structured discussions in their admissions process. The false distinction between (permitted) structured discussions and (prohibited) interviews is unhelpful. We are concerned that because structured discussions are not mentioned in either the primary legislation or the School Admissions Code of Practice, the Minister's insistence that they are distinct from interviews may encourage other admissions authorities to incorporate them into their admissions arrangements.
City Technology Colleges
It is time for Government to radically rethink the position of CTCs in the state funded education system, to address the exclusion of CTCs from coordinated admissions arrangements and from the terms of the Codes of Practice, and to affirm the place of CTCs in the family of publicly funded schools.
Coordinated admissions
The evidence is that parents value transparency, consistency and predictability very highly. The development of a single admissions system across local authority areas and, where appropriate, across LEA boundaries would be a significant contribution to greater clarity in the process of school place allocation. The coordinated arrangements planned for greater London and eight surrounding authorities present an exciting and ambitious goal. We are convinced that, if the system can be made to work, it will make a valuable contribution to improving families' experience of the school admissions process and reducing the amount of distress involved for parents and children alike.
Oversubscription criteria
The manner and order in which oversubscription criteria are applied has a significant impact on the outcome of the admissions process and the degree of fairness and transparency with which the system is perceived to operate. We recommend that the advantages of a single model for the application of oversubscription criteria should be the subject of local consultation and, where appropriate, adopted within and even across LEA boundaries.
Costs
One difficulty in evaluating the school admissions system is that the cost of the system is largely unknown. We have been astonished to find that neither the cost of the school admissions process nor of the appeals system has been monitored either by the DfES or by LEAs. More needs to be done to evaluate school admissions policy and to ensure that arrangements are effective, equitable and do not involve unreasonable public expense.
Appeals
We are concerned that school admission appeals enable entry to schools which have already admitted pupils up to their assessed capacity. More work needs to be done to explore alternatives to the overcrowding of some schools following large numbers of successful appeals. The present arrangements are neither rational nor sustainable.
Selection
All forms of selection at one set of schools have, as a matter of arithmetic, consequences for other schools. A government that permits the continuing expansion of selection, by ability or by aptitude, can only be understood to approve of both the practice of selection and its outcomes. If that is the position of the present Government it should be publicly stated. We believe that it is time for Ministers to engage in an informed debate about the role of selection in secondary education and its impact across the education system as a whole. The Government needs to explain how it reconciles its insistence that there will be no return to selection with its willingness to retain and increase selection where it already exists. Without an honest and robust engagement with this issue the Government's policy on selection will continue to appear ad hoc and without principle.
Grammar school ballots
Setting aside the desirability or otherwise of selective systems of education, the current arrangements for ballots to decide the admissions arrangements of grammar schools are flawed, and waste the time and resources of all concerned. If the Government believes that a local vote is the appropriate mechanism by which the future of selective schools should be decided then it is high time for a review of the present arrangements. In any event, the current provision for grammar school ballots should be immediately withdrawn so as to ensure that no further resources are wasted in this exercise.
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