Observations on school choice

As everyone in education knows, the middle classes grab all the best school places. A high-achieving school can boost local house prices by as much as 20 per cent, taking them to levels that only the affluent can afford. Even if they can't move into the locality, middle-class parents may still wangle their way in. Many oversubscribed secondary schools, though nominally comprehensive, quietly select out the dimmest and most troublesome children. Interviews are banned, but schools still call for "references" from primary heads. The poor, meanwhile, meekly send their children to the nearest school, even if it's sinking fast.

Is there an answer that gives the poor a better chance? Support is growing for an idea first mooted in the New Statesman in July last year. It came from Philip Collins, then director of the Social Market Foundation and now a top adviser to Tony Blair. Collins argued that schools should be banned from giving priority to parents who happen to live nearby and, unless they are grammar schools, from using any form of selection. Instead, where a school has more applicants than places, the lucky ones should be decided by "random allocation". In other words, schools should hold a lottery, though Collins preferred to call it a "ballot". So far, only a handful have taken up the idea, and then only in modified form. They include Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College, one of the most popular schools in London, which allocates 10 per cent of its places to children with musical aptitude, half the others to those who live nearest and the remainder by lottery.

Collins advocated a full-blooded national lottery, involving every state secondary school in England. The proposal isn't as outlandish as it sounds. If poor families could be persuaded to look beyond their nearest school, most comprehensives would end up with a wider spread of abilities and social backgrounds. And research both here and in the United States suggests that, if "problem" children from deprived homes are spread around, standards rise all round and the "sink school" disappears. Moreover, a lottery, unlike the present school admissions system, would be simple, transparent and, above all, egalitarian.

Collins is unlikely to persuade ministers: new Labour wouldn't relish the anger of middle-class parents who have paid through the nose for a house next to their favoured school and then missed out in a lottery. Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, is keen to increase poor parents' access to the best schools. One possibility is to offer them transport subsidies. Another is to create "choice advisers", rather like career or personal advisers, who can guide poor parents through what's on offer and perhaps teach some of the tricks that come naturally to the middle classes.

But deprive middle-class parents completely of their God-given right to buy advantage? Forget it.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website