Reviewing the realities

In the preceding chapters, we have considered three approaches to school admissions based on planning, quasi-markets and randomness. As should be apparent, each of the approaches tends to result in a certain set of outcomes which relate as much or more to the processes utilised to allocate places as to any specified educational outcomes or objectives. Our analysis has been informed by two lines of questioning: first, does each approach deliver what it claims to, and second does each approach meet democratic expectations relating, for example, to equality of citizenship, and, constitutional expectations relating to accountability?

Simply put, the evidence we have considered on the outcomes of each approach leads to the conclusion that the democratic expectations at stake in education are too important to be left to either quasi-markets or randomness. The reality emerging, from Chapter Five especially, is an increasing potential for schools to choose pupils rather than parents choosing schools. Given the market-driven interest of individual schools to attract and retain the ‘best’ pupils, while ‘excluding’ less desirable children via the admissions processes or via subsequent action (see Children's Commissioner, 2012), the interests of already vulnerable groups such as children with special educational needs (SEN), or with the highest socio-economic deprivation indicators, might be thought to be especially at risk.

Allen and Burgess (2010, p 6) observe that different ‘admissions policies will simply alter the set of parents who are able to achieve their choice of school’. In such a situation it is worrying to find think-tanks of very different political orientation reaching remarkably similar conclusions: SMF (2004, p 6) conclude, ‘School admissions in England and Wales do not sit well with equity and fairness’, while IPPR (2007, p 4) note that ‘the current admissions system is a cause of segregation by social class and ability across our schools system … [and] … is likely to lead to systematic unfairness in terms of whose preferences can be satisfied’. In Chapter Five we pointed towards strong evidence that such choice as parents enjoy in practice depends crucially on the family’s income and social capital – ‘some parents are … better equipped to work the system to make sure they get what they want’ (IPPR, 2007, p 17).