Memorandum submitted by Professor Simon
Burgess, University of Bristol
PRELIMINARY POINTS
1. This evidence is about school choice
and the "sorting" or stratification of pupils between
schools.
2. There are different ways of deciding
which pupils should attend which schools. This might be done on
the basis of ability (test results). It might be on the basis
of location, or "neighbourhood schooling", whereby each
pupil simply attends their nearest school. Or it might be on the
basis of choice: each pupil attends the school they choose. When
considering the potential impact of choice-based schooling, it
is important to compare it to an alternative basis of assignment,
and not just consider it in a vacuum. The most obvious comparator
today is neighbourhood schooling.
3. The nature of the school assignment policy
affects the composition and stratification of neighbourhoods as
well as schools. Typically, neighbourhood schooling will lead
to more stratified communities as affluent families cluster round
the better schools. Choice-based schooling in principle produces
more diverse neighbourhoods, as place of residence is divorced
from school attended. Any impact on neighbourhoods and on the
demand for particular houses will also affect house prices. For
example, enhancing the role of choice would remove or diminish
the premium from living very close to a good school, reducing
the value of such houses.
4. Part of the point of choice-based schooling
is that it breaks the link between where you live and which school
you attend. In principle, compared to school assignment on test
scores or on which house you own, it is therefore more pro-poor.
This seems to be a key issue in thinking about social mobility—how
to reduce the dependence of the quality of school a pupil attends
on the financial circumstances of her family. There are of course
issues about how school choice works in practice, which I address
below.
WHERE WE
ARE NOW
5. Our evidence relates to state secondary
schools in England. We have not studied primary schools. Our dataset
does not contain private schools. About 93% of secondary school
students go to state schools.
6. The current situation is one of school
choice. The issues are about reforming the system to make choice
more even and to make it work better. It is not the case that
we are in a system of neighbourhood schooling, and we are considering
moving to a choice-based system.
7. Most pupils have "choice" in
the sense of available alternatives. 81% of all pupils have three
schools within 5km of their home, including 99% of pupils in London,
91% in other urban areas, and 42% in rural areas. This is simply
how many schools are nearby, not whether they have spare places.
8. School commutes are on average about
1.6km, with 75% travelling less than 3.5km. In London, the average
school commute is 1.65km, in other urban areas 1.55km, and in
rural areas 2.35km. In London, a quarter of pupils travel more
than 3km, in other urban areas 2.8km, and in rural areas 5.7km.
9. Half of all pupils do not go to their
nearest school. About a third do not go to one of their nearest
three schools. These are striking numbers. It is very far from
the case that at the moment everyone goes to their local school.
In London, about 27% go to their nearest school, 44% in other
urban areas and 59% in rural areas.
10. It is likely that some of this movement
may well not be "choice" in the sense of voluntary.
That is to say, in a system with relatively fixed school sizes,
some pupils may find their local school full and have to go further
away. We cannot say from our data what the balance on this is.
CHOICE AND
PUPIL SORTING
11. The present system is unlikely to realise
the pro-poor potential of school choice, because of two factors.
First, ability to exercise choice differs between pupils, and
second, places in popular schools cannot increase (fast enough),
so that some rationing system is used. This is often based on
location, so bringing back the importance of owning the right
house.
12. We find that the impact of greater availability
of choice is to raise sorting. We measure sorting using standard
measures of segregation, and we measure choice by the number of
schools easily reachable. We focus on post-residential sorting—that
is, we compare sorting of pupils in neighbourhoods to the sorting
of the same pupils across schools. We show that the greater is
choice available, the higher is sorting in schools relative to
the sorting in neighbourhoods.
13. We conduct the thought experiment of
assigning each pupil to their nearest school, and measure sorting
on that basis. Sorting across schools that pupils actually attend
is higher in almost all LEAs than it would be under this thought
experiment. In some cases, considerably higher. This reinforces
the idea that under the current system, the differential availability
of choice plus semi-fixed school sizes works to increase sorting.
This is just a thought experiment—as argued above, a policy
of "each child shall go to their nearest school" is
likely to produce even more segregated schools.
14. We analyse the pupils who do not go
to their nearest school. They typically travel non-trivial extra
distances to school—on average over 2km further. They also
typically go to schools that are performing better on the usual
league table scores. In fact, 82% of pupils from the poorest third
of neighbourhoods go to better (in that sense) schools, and 97%
of pupils from the most affluent third of neighbourhoods do. The
positive side of this is that most poor pupils are "trading
up"; the negative side is the gap in the extent to which
this happens between poor and rich.
ISSUES FOR
A SUCCESSFUL
SCHOOL CHOICE
POLICY
15. Clearly different families have different
financial capacities to exercise choice. This involves funding
school travel and affording high house prices. If a choice policy
is successful, then house price gradients around schools may in
time become much less pronounced. But different abilities to afford
school travel will remain. Thus policy will need to redress this
imbalance by providing subsidised school transport for poorer
families.
16. The flexible supply of school places
is crucial. This is two-sided: popular schools need to be able
to offer more places to avoid (much) rationing, and unpopular
schools need to be turned around quickly or closed quickly. There
are different ways of making more places available in popular
schools beyond simply physically expanding that school. If the
important factor in a school's success is transferable, then allowing
such schools to manage other schools would achieve the same end.
The other alternative is simply to create more good schools in
areas without them. The policy on Trust status may be designed
to enable all these three methods. The key thing for choice to
be real is either that there be no rationing of places, or that
the rationing not use some factor, such as location, related to
income.
17. This relates to the issue of what makes
a good school good—is it the leadership and management of
a school, the resources available, or the nature of the peer group
in the school. To the extent that such things are transferable,
popular schools can take over other schools—essentially
the popular school becomes bigger quickly. To the extent that
such factors are not transferable, expanding or taking over other
schools would simply dilute them. The school peer group seems
the obvious possibility here. In this case, popular schools would
be reluctant to expand. This obviously would mean that a choice
policy would not work.
18. The response of parents to choice will
also be important. This depends on what parents want from schools.
If it is educational quality, then the choice policy may produce
that. If it is in fact a peer group for their child that they
consider "acceptable", then a choice policy may bring
about more mixing of students as the role of address in determining
school declines.
19. Trust status may enable popular schools
to expand or take over others more easily, helping choice to work
better. But the general greater freedom they would have may well
exacerbate tendencies to seek out more able pupils. This will
work against the idea of choice, and will tend to produce more
segregated schools.
OTHER ISSUES
20. One argument made in favour of facilitating
school choice is that it will increase the competitive pressure
felt by schools. This will lead them to "raise their game"
and work harder to raise standards. In principle this argument
makes sense—schools have incentives to produce high scores,
and parents have some information on schools performance through
the school league tables. Evidence from the US in favour of this
view is strong. There is little evidence for England on this point
and what there is does not offer strong support.
21. Given recent concerns raised by Trevor
Phillips about ethnic segregation in schools, this seems to be
an unfortunate time to be encouraging the establishment of new
faith schools.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
1. Background Facts for School Choice
in England. Simon Burgess, Adam Briggs, Brendon McConnell
and Helen Slater. Attached.
2. The Impact of School Choice on Sorting
by Ability and Socio-economic Factors in English Secondary Education.
Simon Burgess, Brendon McConnell, Carol Propper and Deborah
Wilson. Forthcoming as a chapter in an MIT Press book edited by
Paul Peterson and Ludger Woessman.
3. Choice: Will more Choice improve
Outcomes in Education and Health Care? The Evidence from Economic
Research. Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and Deborah Wilson.
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/choice.pdf
December 2005
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