Schools 'should be stripped of power over admissions'

13 April 2012

Tony Blair's favourite think-tank today cast doubt on the Prime Minister's flagship education reforms and called for schools to be stripped of their power to run their own admissions policies.

A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warned that schools with control over their admissions were far more likely to select pupils by ability and social background.

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Parents' choice over where to send their children should be balanced with the need to make sure schools take a fair range of mixed ability pupils, the report said.

There is "no reason" why Mr Blair's city academies, trust schools, faith schools and foundation schools should be able to control which pupils they take on.

IPPR director Nick Pearce said: "We need a system of fair choice for all parents and pupils.

"At the moment, schools that control their own admission arrangements are selecting their pupils, and our classrooms are more socially segregated than the local communities outside the school gates."

He said reforms to the school admissions code designed to stamp out back-door selection did not go far enough because headteachers still had control over admissions.

"The new system is like asking pupils to mark their own essays, while providing them with detailed rules designed to prevent them from cheating," he said.

"Schools can run themselves and develop a strong individual ethos without needing to operate their own admissions policies."

The IPPR said faith schools which run their own admissions were 10 times more likely to be "highly unrepresentative" of the children in their surrounding area than faith schools where the council is the admissions authority.

Non-faith schools which ran their own admissions were six times more likely to have a "highly unrepresentative" intake of pupils.

If the new admissions code fails to reduce social segregation in English secondary schools, all state schools should be stripped of their power over admissions, the IPPR said.

Local authorities should allocate all places and in the long term, every local authority should move towards a system of "area-wide fair banding", in which pupils are placed in ability "bands" to make sure schools are mixed ability, Mr Pearce said.

"Parental preferences would be taken into account alongside the need to achieve a mixed ability intake of pupils at every school," he said.

"Parents could then be confident that every school would have a fair mix of pupils."

The IPPR's study followed the Education and Inspections Act, which gives more schools freedom to run their own admissions policies and paved the way for a new generation of independent "trust schools" backed by business and faith groups.

Mr Blair faced a major revolt from within the Labour Party over the plans, with MPs raising concerns that freedom over admissions would result in more academic selection by the "back door".

This week the new school admissions code comes into force and local authorities in England will write to parents with offers of secondary school places for this autumn.

Schools minister Lord Adonis, a former Number 10 adviser, rejected the report's recommendations.

"All children must have a fair and equal chance of getting into a school of their choice," he said.

"That's why we have toughened up the new mandatory school admission code to crack down on unfair admissions policies and prevent schools cherry-picking the brightest pupils.

"We agree that ability banding can be an effective way of widening access but we're not going to prescribe that all schools must use it.

"Schools should have the power and freedom to set their own admissions policies according to local needs.

"The report is wrong to suggest that schools operate in a vacuum - by law, they must consult widely on their proposed admission arrangements, with any objections being ruled on by the independent schools adjudicator."

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