It is nearly 10 years since i began writing for the Guardian. My first piece in 2003 was in terms of school admissions, and it was long. There has been much to claim a couple of subject that back then received relatively little scrutiny.
I have since written and spoken in this topic more times than i’m able to remember, that is why a feeling of groundhog day descended after I heard the headlines from the RSA Academies Commission report last month.
It was not wholly surprising that focus focused immediately at the commissioners’ remarks about school admissions. On one level this remains a dry, dusty technical subject. On another, it goes to the center of parent and pupil choice, fairness and equality.
Every parent knows and understands the sophisticated division that starts to occur as children approach reception or years 5 and six: the home moves, the church-going and personal tuition, those difficult conversations about what’s “best for my child” – coincidentally the title of a movie I made in this subject shortly after the unique Guardian piece appeared.
And while it’s true that during some parts of the rustic here’s mitigated by loss of realistic choice, in lots of other areas admissions increasingly contribute to the complex hierarchy that makes English schools some of the most segregated on earth.
Academies aren’t always the worst offenders. Many have more comprehensive, diverse and challenging intakes than neighbouring schools that either select by ability or faith, or are gifted a favourable catchment area.
But, because the then Chief Adjudicator of faculties admitted to me in 2003, as more schools become their very own admissions authorities it really is much more likely that they’re going to “drift to the luxurious”. It’s always the quickest path to league table advantage.
And academies and free schools has been given extra, unnecessary freedoms. They’re only obliged to conform with the Admissions Code via their funding agreements, which the coalition has said may be varied to permit effective opt-outs from what’s obligatory for other, maintained, schools.
So it’s likely that through the years, and as more schools convert, the difficulty of subtle selection and exclusion will persist and oldsters will increasingly be required to navigate this kind of complex local landscapes that usually benefit the knowing and well-resourced.
This government, and the last, claimed to need an admissions system that promoted equity and fair access, and allocated places clearly and objectively, in order that parents could understand their possibilities of success. The difficulty is that action never matched the rhetoric and reform remains needed in two specific areas.
The first concerns the kind of admissions criteria which might be permissible. The large beasts during this particular jungle don’t seem to be really academies, however the grammar and faith schools. But until someone has the courage to tackle those mammoth vested interests, inequalities will continue.
Less politically contentious may well be tougher, more comprehensive regulation. Since Mr Gove is in a mood for U-turns, i might also suggest that no school must have the ability to opt out of the Admissions Code. There have to be a regulatory framework that applies to all schools, and all children – including those of the founders – without exception.
But compliance with the code still rests at the willingness of people, local authorities or other schools to complain about non-compliant or bad practice.
The Office of the colleges Adjudicator doesn’t have the powers had to police the system properly, and with the decimation of local authority capacity and influence, it isn’t clear who intervenes on behalf of area people if nobody complains. In some areas of this convoluted web of accountability, parents’ only right to redress is via the secretary of state, who’s now answerable for several thousand schools.
The Academies Commission idea of stories to the OSA detailing the social background of every child who applies, and of every child admitted to each school, is an efficient one.
I would add the applicants’ prior attainment to that blend and a “navigability” rating, to spell out the obstacles faced by parents in areas where nearly every secondary school now has its own different, often impenetrable, entry criteria.
But it is not altogether clear what should and will happen next. Unless an investigation follows into why and the way some schools be capable of engineer themselves radically more favourable intakes than their neighbours, with a transparent action plan to both rectify that and provides every child an equal chance, the drift to the luxurious could become an avalanche.
