25 May 2007
The political battle over academy schools will intensify next week, when a leading think-tank publishes data indicating that institutions that control their own admissions procedures are increasingly less representative of their local communities.
Researchers at the Institute for Public Policy Research are set to claim that covert academic selection is rife across England – even in schools with supposed caps on selection, such as academies. This is in spite of an emerging political consensus that overt selection has stifled social mobility and reinforced educational disadvantages.
The IPPR study, due out on June 1, will call for government action over covert selection in academies, faith schools and other schools that control their own admissions.
Academies were set up by outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair and were intended to be high-quality, high-investment schools for deprived areas. Initial results show that many have raised standards at both GCSE and Key Stage Three levels.
However, previous IPPR figures, published in February, showed that non-religious schools that are their own admissions authorities, including academies, are six times more likely to be 'highly unrepresentative' of their surrounding area than community schools whose admissions are overseen by a local education authority.
Richard Brooks, the IPPR's associate director and author of the new report, hinted at his findings to Public Finance. 'There's very good evidence that schools that are their own admission authorities are less representative of their local areas and have a higher concentration of high-ability pupils than those which are not,' he said.
'Academies are their own admissions authorities and they have strong incentives to covertly select high-ability pupils.'
Brooks' study will raise questions over the Conservative Party's commitment to an extensive roll-out of academies, which are funded by a mixture of state and private cash. This was announced by shadow education secretary David Willetts last week, and enthusiastically endorsed by party leader David Cameron.
Willetts dumped decades of Conservative tradition when he said he would freeze the number of grammar schools and raise to more than 400 the number of independent academies.
But Brooks told Public Finance: 'It would be a tragedy if we simply replicated the grammar school system through a process of covert selection into popular schools and academies.'
His proposed solution is the establishment of independent local admissions bodies 'whose primary interest is the education of the whole local area, not the success of a particular institution'.
However, Willetts does not believe that would be required. 'It's true that schools that control their own admissions are less representative of their own areas. But they're in more prosperous areas and they end up with about 5%–6% on free school meals, which is similar to the best schools where admissions are overseen by LEAs,' he said.
'If you look at outcomes, its pretty much the same whether you control the admissions or not.'
PFmay2007
