4.2.1 Key findings
• The system in 2006 was more efficiently managed and better co-ordinated than in 2000.
• In some areas the LA continued to co-ordinate admissions after the national offer date and in others this role ended at that point.
• The requirement to consult made compliance with the School Admission
• Community and Voluntary Controlled schools and Academies were more likely than Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools to comply with the regulations and guidance stated in the 2003 School Admissions Code of Practice
• Voluntary Aided schools were the least likely to comply compared with all other types of school
• Procedural non-compliance is only a part of the reason for segregated intakes
• There was no evidence for the view that parents from lower socio economic groups are being denied access to popular schools just because they are less able to understand the admissions process.
• More educated parents were likely to access more information but very few parents felt they were lacking basic information about secondary schools
• There was no evidence that parents who were less educated had any
reduced chance of gaining their first preference. 4.2.2 The co-ordination and regulation of admissions
The system in 2006 was more efficiently managed and better co-ordinated than in 2000. 99% of parents completed an application form for starting secondary school in 2006. The majority of respondents (97%) received a single offer for their child on the same day in March 2006. The co-ordination role of the Local Authority was important in delivering this efficiency giving them oversight of the needs of all children and parents. The legislation and guidance governing this co-ordination was aimed at ensuring a single offer.
The purpose of co-ordinated admission schemes is to establish mechanisms for ensuring, so far as reasonably practicable, that every parent of a child living in the LEA area who has applied for a school place in the ‘normal admission round’ receives an offer of one, and only one, school place on the same day. (School Admissions Code of Practice 2003 para 6.1)
Consequently, in the model timetables offered as guidance the co-ordination responsibility of LA's ceases after the national offer day of March 1st. In some areas this co-ordination role did end with the offer of places in March and, following that, each admission authority dealt with its own appeals and any other matters and no one had responsibility for the management of admissions and appeals across the whole area. In others it appeared that agreements had been reached that the LA should continue to have a role. There is evidence from previous research (Coldron et al 2002) that there is more likelihood that Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools are less likely to comply with the legislation and guidance on the management of appeals and that where the LA manages the process standards are higher. There is also a case for better co- ordination for in-year admissions. We were unable in this project to gather data as to how many LAs did or did not extend their co-ordination role. It would be of considerable interest to gather that data and to try gauge any consequences for parents, children and schools as a result.
It was not part of the project to gather data about admission forums or whether or not the schools had actually consulted but, assuming all schools consulted as required within the admission forum, this was likely to make compliance with the School Admission Code of Practice 2003 more likely overall because the greater transparancy made timely objections more possible. However admission authorities were only required to have regard to the code and objections may not have been made against non-compliant proposals. These may partly explain the different levels of compliance we found but further research would need to be done to find how admission forums were working and how effective the consultation and objection process was in policing the system. Our data shows that the admission arrangements of Community and Voluntary Controlled schools and Academies as found in the composite prospectuses were more likely to comply with the regulations and guidance in the 2003 School Admissions Code of Practice than those of Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools.. This was particularly the case for Voluntary Aided schools – many more requested supplementary information other than to apply published criteria, fewer prioritised children in care and more made parental commitment a criterion. Each of these provided a means of covert selection of children. Although it is not possible to establish beyond doubt that this was a cause, it is the case that Voluntary Aided and Foundation schools have an intake that is more socially advantaged and has higher prior attainment than Community schools63. It is not possible to say how much this non-compliance actually works against certain groups of parents gaining fair access to all schools but given the incentives schools have to select the easier to educate children64 it is likely to make a contribution. The fact that Community comprehensive schools also differ markedly in their intake (Gibbons and Telhaj 2007) shows that segregation of intakes is not the result of these procedural issues on their own. The cumulative effect of these means of selection together with other factors is what maintains segregation, and we look at this in more detail in a later section.
4.2.3 Transparency, Information and the manageability of the process
If parents are to be able to make conscientious choices they need information about schools and they need to be able to manage the process. If some parents have more information or can manage the information and process better than others then there is a potential problem of equality of opportunity and for conscientious choice.
In the survey of parents in 2000 (Flatley et al 2001) nearly nine in ten parents (87%) said that they were satisfied they had all the information they needed to
63
For the latest in a long line of studies that reveal that schools that are free to set their own admissions criteria have a more advantaged intake see Gibbons, S. and Telhaj, S. (2007).
64
help them choose a school. However only 57% of parents reported they knew about the oversubscription criteria of their schools. Parents in the higher occupational groups, who were owner occupiers, and educated to degree level were more likely to know. But, despite this, gaining their first preference school did not vary significantly by class.
The current parent survey seven years later also found that more educated parents were likely to access more information but that very few parents felt they were lacking basic information about secondary schools. 80% of parents who considered applying to over-subscribed schools said that the oversubscription criteria were easy to understand. Furthermore, there was no evidence that parents who were less educated had any reduced chance of gaining their first preference. This suggests some caution about the claim that parents from less affluent socio- economic groups are failing to get into high performing schools because they are not as able as more affluent or well educated parents to understand the process and the information. They may have less adequate social networks to gain good references, or poorer writing skills that give clues as to their social status and educational attainment and therefore aid covert social selection. If, as the evidence suggests, all social groups are gaining their first preference schools in equal measure, but that a substantial proportion of social segregation persists in schools, then it seems that less advantaged parents are expressing first preference for schools with less socially advantaged intakes. This is more likely to be a result of having less financial capital to move to the catchment area of a school, or that they wish to go to schools within their own community, prioritising solidarity rather than rejection of people like themselves.
Nevertheless there are some interesting findings concerning information. Firstly, the analysis of the levels of complexity of the oversubscription criteria showed that, on each measure, Voluntary Aided schools are more complex than other types of schools. They have more OSCs, twice as many items per OSC and twice as many items in total. Secondly, some composite prospectuses do not reveal the subscription status of schools.