Markets And Equity in Education

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Markets and Equity in Education

Geoffrey Walford

Continuum

Markets and Equity in Education

Related titles Philosophy of Education — Richard Pring Theory of Education — David Turner Analysing Undemchievement in Schools — Emma Smith Private Education — Geoffrey Walford

MARKETS AND EQUITY IN EDUCATION

Geoffrey Walford

continuum LONDON . NEW YORK

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street 11 York Road New York London NY 10010 SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com © Geoffrey Walford 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-8735-1 (hardback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents

List of tables Abbreviations

vii ix

Introduction

1

Part 1. Choice and Diversity 1

2

3

4

Diversity and choice in school education: an alternative view

9

First published in Oxford Review of Education (1996) Weak choice, strong choice, and the new Christian schools 24 From M. Halstead (ed.), Parental Choice and Education: Principles, Policies and Practices, London: Kogan Page (1994) Durkheim, democracy and diversity: some thoughts on recent changes in England and Wales 35 From W.S.F. Pickering (ed.), Emile Durkheim: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists, London: Routledge (2001) Does the market ensure quality? 52 First published in Westminster Studies in Education (2001)

Part 2. Comprehensive Schools and Selection 5 6

A return to selection? First published in Westminster Studies in Education (1994) From common schooling to selection? Affirming and contesting the comprehensive ideal, 1976—2001 First published in R. Phillips andj. Furlong (eds), Education, Reform and the State: Politics, Policy and Practice. London: Routledge Falmer (2001).

67

81

vi

CONTENTS

Part 3. Studying School C h o i c e 7

8

9

A panic about school choice S. Carroll and G. Walford; first published in Educational Studies 22.3 (1996) Parents' responses to the school quasi-market S. Carroll and G. Walford; first published in Research Papers in Education 12.1 (1997) The child's voice in school choice S. Carroll and G. Walford; first published in Educational Management in Education 25.2 (1997)

97

112

138

Part 4. Developing Strong Choice: New Schools in the Market 10

11

Sponsored grant-maintained schools: extending the franchise? First published in Oxford Review of Education 23.1 (1997) A policy adventure: sponsored grant-maintained schools First published in Educational Studies 26.2 (2000)

151 168

Part 5. Assessing Policies on Choice 12

13

The market and school-based management in England Paper first presented at the Third International Forum on Educational Reform, Education Decentralization Revisited: School-based Management, September 2003 The educational policies of New Labour and the old problem of inequality From O. Achs, K.H. Gruber, E. Tesar and W. Weidinger (eds),

187

209

Bildung: Konsumgut oder Bugerrecht, Vienna: Obv&hpt (2004) References

223

List of Tables

7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 9.1

Allocation of secondary school places in Sutton Coldfield in 1992 Allocation of secondary school places in Sutton Coldfield in 1993 Response rates for area A Response rates for area B Interviewee characteristics Socioeconomic characteristics of area A Socioeconomic characteristics of area B 'Passive' and 'active' choice criteria met by each family 'Active' and 'passive' responses to choice Educational qualifications of sample Categories of choice-making against council tax band

101 102 118 118 118 119 120 123 133 136 141

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Abbreviations

ACE CTC DES D£E D£EE DfES FAS LEA Ofsted PANIC

Accelerated Christian Education City Technology College Department of Education and Science Department for Education Department for Education and Employment Department for Education and Skills Funding Agency for Schools Local Educational Authority Office for Standards in Education Parents Against No Individual Choice


Introduction

One of the most important areas of research and debate in education over the last decade or more has been that of increased choice and marketization in schooling and the equity effects of these changes. In 1994 Cassell published my book Choice and Equity in Education which gave an overview of the situation up to that time. Since then I have conducted several pieces of research and written widely on issues related to choice, markets, diversity and equity in education. This book gathers together many of those papers, most of which have been published in refereed academic journals, with a few in edited books or conference papers. While some are easier to find than others, I believe that there is merit in bringing them together within a single book where they will provide a useful point of reference. The chapters are presented more or less in their original form. I have made only slight editorial changes and I have made no attempt to update them to take into account more recent research or argument. It is thus important to note the original date of publication, so that the chapters can be set in their historic context. That said, there is little in the argument of these chapters that I would wish to change were I to write them anew. The problems and debates around markets and education remain, with little resolution having been made during the time since the original writing. The chapters in the book are divided into five parts. Part 1, on 'choice and diversity', brings together four chapters from 1994 to 2001 that together discuss the central problems and debates about markets and equity. Chapter 1 was originally written as part of an exchange with David Hargreaves about the ideas expressed in his article 'Diversity and choice in school education: a modified libertarian view' (Hargreaves 1996). It discusses the difficulties of using cost-benefit analysis in education, examines in detail some of the documents on which Hargreaves' argument was based and traces the development of policy on school

2


choice. It is argued that policy on choice must be understood within a consideration of the wider social and political context in which that policy has arisen. The chapter then documents the various new forms of selection that have accompanied increased choice and considers problems of social segregation. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how the system might be reformed. Chapter 2 reports on some research on a group of parents and others who have developed 'strong choice' by starting their own schools. The number of these evangelical Christian schools has grown steadily, and the schools present an alternative form of schooling for the children who attend them. The chapter discusses the nature of these schools and why they were set up. Chapter 3 looks to the work of Emile Durkheim for insights into the possible effects of changes in the choice and diversity of schools. It examines some of Durkheim's writings on the state and on schooling and applies his ideas to the establishment of new schools in the maintained sector and to the controls that the state might apply on such new schools. Chapter 4 discusses the claim that greater market forces between schools will act to raise the quality of educational provision. First, it examines the changes that have been made within the English and Welsh educational systems over the last two decades and discusses the research evidence about the relationship between competition and quality. The evidence is found not to support the claim. Second, it considers the extreme form of free-market schooling proposed by James Tooley, and finds the proposal unacceptable. Third, it argues for a reconceptualization of what is meant by the concept of quality in education. Part 2 contains two chapters on comprehensive schools and selection. Chapter 5 was published in 1994 and describes the then recent changes in the education system, such as the introduction in England and Wales of City Technology Colleges and grant-maintained schools, and the growing pressure from the political Right for the reintroduction of grammar schools that had revived the debate about selection between different types of school. At the same time, open enrolment and increased choice of school had highlighted the question of selection between schools of the same type. This chapter reviews the debate on selection in its historic context, and argues that greater selection will reintroduce and extend problems which comprehensive education attempted to solve. Chapter 6, originally published in 2001, reviews the history and development of British comprehensive schools from 1976. Inevitably, there is some degree of overlap between these chapters, but I have chosen to retain some elements of repetition to enable each chapter to stand alone.

INTRODUCTION

3

The chapters in Part 3 report on a relatively small-scale study of school choice conducted in collaboration with Steven Carroll. Chapter 7 presents a case-study that examines the workings of the local quasi-market of schools within a prosperous town, Sutton Coldfield, that is part of the larger metropolitan area of the West Midlands. Due to a change in the age of entry to secondary education Sutton Coldfield was first plunged into an extended market in 1992. This case-study shows that the new situation initially caused confusion and anger. Some Sutton Coldfield residents were denied places for their children within the town and were instead offered places for their children in Birmingham working-class estate schools. The article describes the formation and activities of a local pressure group which opposed these changes, and reports the results of a small-scale study of a sample of parents' choice-making processes in 1993. It is shown that access to financial and cultural capital had become more rather than less important in the process of allocating children to secondary schools. Chapter 8 reports the results of a qualitative interview study conducted with the parents of 32 children who were about to move to secondary schools. The sample was drawn from two areas of contrasting socioeconomic status within a single local education authority (LEA), and sought to investigate the relationships between socioeconomic status and the families' relationships with the quasi-market of schools. The results are discussed in terms of the degree to which the families acted strategically in their local markets. It is shown that the relationships are complex and multifaceted, and cannot be reduced to simple groups of similarly acting families. However, strong relationships were found between both socioeconomic status and educational level and the degree to which families 'played the market'. Chapter 9 is particularly important as it discusses an element of school choice that is still rarely acknowledged or discussed. A series of interviews was conducted with parents from two contrasting socioeconomic areas, in an attempt to explore the diversity of roles that children play in the process of choosing a secondary school. Considerable variation in the level of engagement with the choice process was found, with some families actively 'playing the market' while others were relatively passive in their involvement. It was found that the child's voice was more likely to be heard where the family had a 'passive' relationship with the market, but the relationship was not straightforward and was a partial reflection of the differing social and cultural constructions of the concept of choice between the two groups. Although clear differences were found, there were no simple relationships between indicators of social class and the importance given to the voice of the child. The chapter questions the

4


utility of simple classification schemes that attribute the responsibility for choice to 'parents', 'children' or 'shared responsibility' and also raises doubts about the concept of parents 'delegating' the responsibility for choice to their children. Part 4 contains two chapters that report research into a particular way in which the market of schools was widened during the 1990s. The concept of a sponsored grant-maintained school was designed to enable selected private schools to enter the state-maintained sector and to develop stronger choice in the marketplace. The schools were also designed to solve a number of particular problems caused by groups representing religious minorities who wished to obtain funding from the state for their schools. The 1993 Education Act introduced changes that encouraged the supply-side of the quasi-market of schools. As a result of that Act, since April 1994 it has been possible for groups of parents or independent sponsors to apply to the Secretary of State for Education in England or the Secretary of State for Wales to establish their own grant-maintained schools. Additionally, existing faith-based or other private schools were able to apply to become re-established as grant-maintained schools. Chapter 10 traces the attempts of various existing private schools and potential sponsors to establish new schools within the state system. Very few had been successful at that point, and it is argued that the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS) and the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) are operating the new scheme in ways similar to those of a commercial franchise. Chapter 11 gives a further account of the results of this 'policy adventure', and suggests that insights can be gained about the nature of the policy process through a consideration of 'policy as text' and 'policy as discourse'. In particular it uses the concepts of 'policy text' and 'policy discourse' to illuminate how particular interpretations were given to decisions that followed legislation. Part 5 presents two of my recent attempts to assess the various policies on markets, choice and equity in education. The first of these examines school-based management and the market. The move towards an increased emphasis on market forces has been linked to greater school self-management. This chapter argues that Caldwell and Spinks's concept of the 'self-managing school' has been an important aspect of the legitimization of the competitive market in schools. However, the concept has been used in England in ways different from that originally intended. It became entwined with the Conservative government's desire to decrease expenditure on education, weaken the power of LEAs (to which the state's control over education had traditionally been delegated) and to increase the marketization and privatization of schooling

INTRODUCTION

5

through competition between schools. The end result is that increased competition between schools has narrowed the curriculum and reinforced a hierarchy of unequally funded schools, which in turn has deepened differences in children's schooling experience. School-based management was originally justified in terms of the effect that it is said to have on efficiency and effectiveness and, ultimately, on students' attainment. In England, as many of the changes to schools occurred at the same time, it is far from proven that any improvements are related to self-management of schools as such. Indeed, it may be that regular school inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the introduction of a national curriculum and, more recently, a number of special initiatives such as the Literacy Hour and the Numeracy Strategy have had an equally important effect in raising students' performance compared to that of the introduction of self-management. The final chapter brings the discussion up to date and examines the policies of New Labour with regard to markets in education. The chapter puts forward the view that the Labour government has embraced neoliberal and neoconservative ideas in addition to its own form of neosocialism. It is argued that such a mixture is unlikely to lead to desirable consequences.


PARTI

Choice and Diversity


CHAPTER 1

Diversity and choice in school education: an alternative view*

David Hargreaves's argument This chapter takes as its starting-point an article by David Hargreaves (1996) in which he presents a modified libertarian approach to school choice. That such an influential figure within the British educational scene should adopt this view was worthy of comment in itself, but it also provided a convenient position to challenge. In outline, David Hargreaves argues that, all other things being equal, it is preferable for families to have a diversity of schools to choose from rather than no choice. Taking what he calls a 'common-sense'position, he argues that the state should not deny choice to those who want it unless there are very powerful, reasonable and well documented grounds (arguments, evidence) for doing so. Diversity and choice is the desirable state unless and until (i) some convincing argument and evidence can be adduced that the costs greatly outweigh the benefits, and (ii) it can be shown that costs cannot be reduced or overcome by limited state intervention. Further, he claims that this 'common-sense' position is firmly grounded in the UN universal declaration of human rights where it is asserted that parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. He recognizes that there is some evidence that increased parental choice will exacerbate the tendency for oversubscribed schools to use some form of selection, but argues that there is insufficient evidence to show that the costs of choice outweigh the benefits. Alternative policies, such as strong inspection and strict control over * First published in Oxford Review of Education 22.2 (1996): 143-54.

10


admissions criteria, would ensure that the costs of diversity and choice were minimized.

The cost-benefit balance No system of education will meet all of the challenges and demands made of it by the varying groups and individuals with legitimate interests. Each system will tend to advantage some and disadvantage others. Any judgements about the desirability of particular systems are valuebased, and link to the commentator's desired role for the state in education and perceptions of the nature of an ideal society. The use of a cost—benefit within any evaluation is thus far from straightforward. Even if we could gather valid and reliable data, the way in which these should be balanced is dependent upon values. How, for example, does one weigh the small chance that greater diversity may encourage social disintegration against the larger chance of academic advancement for a small number of individuals? Hargreaves makes his own value position clear. His particular formulation of a cost—benefit analysis is biased towards choice. This bias shows itself both in the initial formulation of the 'balance' and in the practicalities of evidence-gathering. First, he insists that choice should be approved in principle, and that intervention should be permitted only when the effects of choice are demonstrably deleterious and costs can be shown irremediably to outweigh benefits. Second, the ease with which evidence could be accumulated is biased in the direction of individual choice against the costs and benefits of the society as a whole. For, in general, the benefits of increased choice are likely to accrue to individuals making choices, while costs are more likely to be borne collectively by particular disadvantaged groups and society as a whole. Benefits are likely to be far easier to perceive as they are usually visible in the short term and accrue to a small number of individuals who are aware of those advantages. In contrast, the costs are likely to be longer-term, initially hidden and paid (often unknowingly) by a large number of people. I see no reason for accepting this bias towards choice which is supposedly based upon a 'common-sense' view. Rather than seek to show that there is overwhelming evidence that the overall costs of increased choice and diversity clearly outweigh the benefits to some individuals, I shall attempt to indicate that current government policy contains within it severe dangers that are unlikely to be reduced through greater government controls on admission criteria or through inspection-related interventions.

CHOICE AND DIVERSITY

11

The pressure for choice and diversity Hargreaves states that the United Nations universal declaration of human rights asserts that parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. This is correct, and it is a right that few on the political left would now question, but further instruments make it clear that this right does not extend to forcing the state to pay for this choice. Article 13 of the U N International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 states that The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, where applicable, legal guardians, to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions. (Quoted in Lester and Pannick 1987: 14) In a similar way, Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights states: 'No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity to their own religious and philosophical convictions' (quoted in Lester and Pannick 1987: 6). When this was ratified in 1952, the British government added a reservation that 'in view of certain provisions of the Education Act in force in the United Kingdom, the principle affirmed in the second sentence of Article 2 is accepted by the United Kingdom only so far as it is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training, and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure' (p. 6). There are two aspects worth noting here. The first is that true diversity and choice between different schools are linked to the religious and moral convictions of parents or guardians, and the second is that the state is not expected to pay for this diversity of provision, merely not to prohibit it. While Hargreaves quotes this legal position to buttress his argument, it actually has very little connection with the situation in Britain. For, while there are indeed some parents who have pressured to obtain state funding for religious schools representing a genuine desire for diversity in the terms envisaged by the Declaration, the main pressure for choice comes from a very different source. I have shown elsewhere (Walford 1994b; 1995a) that small groups representing existing private evangelical Christian schools and Muslim

12


schools have campaigned for the right to become faith-based, grantmaintained schools. This right was granted in the 1993 Education Act and such schools are now able to apply to the Secretary of State for grantmaintained status providing that they are able to find at least 15 per cent of the funding for buildings and land, and are prepared to accept the regulations and constraints applicable to all other grant-maintained schools. This particular policy change might be seen as a prime example of a growth in the diversity of schools as a result of parental pressure. However, the number of parents involved was tiny and, so far, none of the schools has managed to make the transition to grant-maintained status. The campaign for state funding was led by parents who had already established their own private evangelical Christian schools. These parents believed that most of the existing Church of England and Roman Catholic schools were almost indistinguishable from any other state-funded school. According to these parents, the existing voluntary religious schools presented the same largely secular values that were evident within local authority schools. Thus, while there are some examples of parents wishing for a greater genuine diversity of schools, what is noticeable about government policy on so-called 'diversity' is that it has been largely generated by the government itself and has not been the result of pressure from parents. The City Technology Colleges (CTCs), for example, were not the result of pressure from parents, local politicians or industrialists — indeed all three groups in general opposed their introduction (Whitty et al. 1993). Of course, once they had been established, with their greater funding and improved facilities, individual parents and children made applications to them. They have been deemed 'popular', but there is little evidence that their popularity is connected to their supposed dimension of diversity — their technological orientation. When we interviewed some of the students and parents at the first CTC at Solihull, few of them had chosen the school because of its emphasis on technology (Walford and Miller 1991; Walford 1991a). Instead their reasons focused on a belief that the CTC would offer them a 'better' education, but 'better' in standard academic terms. It was not diversity as such that these children and parents wanted, but the choice to go to a school that they perceived would offer the 'same' education, but do it 'better' (Gewirtz et al. 1991). In a similar way, grant-maintained schools were not introduced by government in response to parental demand for greater diversity. They were part of a wider political policy which included the desire to weaken local authorities, and reduce the power of unions. In spite of heavy capital investment and continued additional current expenditure, there is little evidence that grant-maintained schools offer much that is distinc-


13

tively different from that provided in local authority schools. Often parents and pupils see no difference between grant-maintained schools and the local authority schools — apart from better facilities and greater attention to the symbols of academic elitism such as logos and school uniforms. Where they are perceived as different, it is that they offer a 'better'-quality education of the same sort as before (Fitz et al. 1993; Bush et al. 1993). Indeed, one of the seeming paradoxes of government policy is that while it claims to wish to increase diversity, it has imposed a national curriculum and regular inspection by Ofsted which ensures a greater uniformity between schools than existed before. Somewhat paradoxically, one of the reasons for the reluctance of some of the evangelical Christian schools now to apply for grant-maintained status is that they fear that they would become too similar to other schools and lose their true diversity. Throughout Hargreaves's article, diversity and choice are linked together as if they are as 'natural' as fish and chips or love and marriage. They are not. In fact, to begin to understand the pressures behind the policy it is necessary to separate the two.

The development of policy One of the strange aspects of David Hargreaves's paper is that it neglects to consider the wider social and political context in which the policy for increased choice has arisen. It is not a neutral policy that has developed from a consensus view, but rather one that has been a key policy of the political right, as part of a wider political programme. Not only is it part of a wider social policy to increase individualistic competitiveness and reduce the role of the state, but I believe that it is linked to policies to reintroduce selection and further privatize education. Rather than being the 'natural' pair with diversity, government policy on choice is more appropriately paired with competition, selection and privatization. Many highly influential individuals and 'think-tanks' of the New Right have championed selection, marketization, and privatization. Many have been very open about their objectives (Lawton 1994).They have made it clear that they not only accept inequity of provision but see this as desirable. These ideas have been broadly followed, with the result that choice is only minimally linked to real diversity, but is concerned with the right to choose between schools that are supposedly offering the same education, but with perceived differences in effectiveness. Where there has been parental pressure for increased choice it has not been related to diversity in the type of school but to choice between

14


schools that are nominally identical. If there have been demands for increased choice, they have been from well-motivated parents who wish to ensure that their own children are able to attend the school that they perceive to be the 'best' in the local area. There is little pretence about this. The government's clear intention is that choice of school should be influenced by 'league tables' and that schools should be seen within a local hierarchy. I see two main problems with present government policy on increasing the degree of choice that parents have over the schools their children attend. The first is that once schools become oversubscribed, some form of selection of children is inevitable. My fear here is that these policies have rekindled and aggravated problems caused by selection which comprehensive schools attempted to overcome, and that they are likely to increase the differences between schools such that the poorest schooling will be provided for those children most in need and the best for those who already have the most advantages. The second problem is that choice may lead to greater social segregation. We know that inequalities between various groups within British society are increasing (Smith and Noble 1995), and we live in a multicultural society where ethnic divisions periodically come to public prominence. I believe that schools should play a role in celebrating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, and encourage mutual interaction and understanding. I shall deal with both problems in turn.

New forms of selection Hargreaves states that 'schools choose parents rather than parents choosing schools' has become a campaign slogan. This is certainly true. It has become a slogan because it is correct. The 1988 Education Reform Act and the 1993 Education Act encouraged a shift away from comprehensive schooling by promoting new schools which were unequally funded and increased choice between schools nominally of the same type. While these changes were promoted in terms of increasing choice for parents and children, at oversubscribed schools it has become clear that 'choice of school' often means that the schools are able to select the children they wish. Selection has become more overt and the criteria on which pupils are selected have become more varied and confused than ever before. The CTCs provide a good example of this new diversity and confusion of criteria. All of the CTCs are oversubscribed, having on average about three times as many applicants as places available. They are thus forced to select from amongst


15

those who apply. By law they are not allowed to select children on academic ability, but instead use criteria based largely on the degree of motivation of parents and children. The details differ between colleges, but parents are always required to make a special application for admission on behalf of their child, and usually have to be prepared to be interviewed, and to state that they support the college's aims, will help to ensure that homework is done, and intend the child to continue in fulltime education until the age of 18. They also usually have to pay any daily transport costs to the college if the child is accepted. Motivation has to be high for children as well, for they have to be willing to work at a school with a longer school-day and shorter holidays. As a result, children and families where there is a low level of interest in education simply do not apply. The fifteen CTCs have had only limited national impact, but both grant-maintained schools and open enrolment were also designed to increase competition between schools and to encourage parents to make choices between schools. Early research evidence on grant-maintained schools is mixed. One study (Fitz et al. 1993), whilst agreeing that grantmaintained schools were increasingly popular and that a large proportion of grant-maintained schools were selective, argued that (at the time of the research) there was little evidence for a widespread return of a selective system. In contrast, a second study (Bush et al. 1993) showed that 30 per cent of the supposedly comprehensive schools in their grant-maintained sample were using covert selection and one had introduced a selection examination. The authors argued that the grant-maintained policy was leading to the development of a two-tier system. However, since both research studies were conducted, two comprehensive grant-maintained schools have successfully applied for a 'change in character' to become fully academically selective grammar schools. One has become selective by aptitude for technology and nine others have been granted permission to select up to 50 per cent of their intake (Campaign for State Education 1995). Changes in the admissions criteria which involve this degree of selection require Department for Education authorization following a full consultation process, but in mid-1993 new DfE guidelines on admissions announced that all schools were to be allowed to specialize and to select up to 10 per cent of their intake on the basis of abilities in such areas as music, art, sport and technology without any need for official approval. The government argued that specialization need not lead to selection, but once there are more applications than places, selection must inevitably increase. Equally worrying is the growth of 'adverse selection' where 'mistakes' in initial selection procedures are increasingly rectified through temporary or permanent exclusions.

16


Nominal diversity of schools was further increased through the 1993 Education Act. Grant-maintained schools and voluntary aided schools were encouraged to appoint sponsor governors from business and become Technology Colleges specializing in science, technology and mathematics. So far, 50 schools have been able to find at least .£100,000 from sponsors, and in return the schools have received more than matching extra resources from the D£E. Such extra resources to a limited number of schools can lead to substantial differences between the learning environments of neighbouring schools. While overt selection is not necessarily introduced, self-selection will operate in a similar way to the original CTCs. More recently, the new Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Shephard, extended the scheme to include specialist language schools and opened the scheme to a broader range of secondary schools. There have now been several English research studies that have indicated social class inequalities in the workings of the new 'market' for schools, and a process of self-selection occurring in addition to actual selection by schools (see Walford 1994a). Although highly illuminating, I have to agree with David Hargreaves that these studies have been relatively small in scale and report an early stage of the impact of policy changes. In contrast, in Scotland where greater choice resulted from an Act in 1981, there is strong evidence from several large-scale surveys that considerable inequalities have resulted from increased choice and selfselection. One study found that the legislation was leading to a widening of educational inequalities and producing a two-tier system of schools (Adler et al. 1989). Well-motivated parents and children were able to reject local working-class schools because they saw them as undesirable, but by doing so they ensured that their judgement was likely to become a reality for those children who remained. A few pupils from areas of multiple deprivation had been integrated into alternative schools, but this had led to increased social segregation for those remaining in the local school. Another national representative Scottish study found that it was the better-educated parents and those of higher social class who were more likely to have exercised their choice (Willms and Echols 1992). Choosers tended to select schools with higher mean socioeconomic status and higher levels of attainment, but these differences in attainment were actually small once the differences in background characteristics were taken into account. The results suggested that the choice process was increasing between-school segregation, which may produce greater inequalities in attainment between social class groups. Within this Scottish research and the variety of small-scale studies of choice in England, there is little evidence that choice of school is strongly influenced by genuine diversity of type of school. For example, David et


17

al. (1994) found that while parents did recognize single-sex schooling and church schooling as being issues to be considered when thinking about possible secondary schools, they put much more emphasis on nearness to home, reputation, academic results and similar criteria which allowed them to rank schools in a relatively straightforward single hierarchy of desirability. The problem with this is that there is growing evidence that some parents are better placed to 'play the market' than others. Moreover, as Hargreaves points out, the thesis that choice creates competition and that competition drives up standards has yet to be proved. Undoubtedly, it will improve the educational experiences of some children, but, alongside this, greater inequalities and a hierarchy of schools are likely to develop. The children of well-motivated, educated or wealthy families are more likely to make applications to the popular schools. These oversubscribed schools will select children on a diverse and unclear range of criteria, but in a way likely to be heavily skewed towards children from families already highly valuing education. These popular schools will thus improve further through the financial and cultural support of the parents and children selected. In contrast, children from families which do not value education highly will probably find themselves in schools at the bottom of the hierarchy with low levels of financial and parental support. I am in full agreement with Hargreaves about the need to deal effectively with schools at the bottom of this hierarchy that are deemed to be failing. This may entail initial additional support but, if this does not rapidly lead to improvement, the school should be 'murdered' rather than left to a slow and damaging death. Such extreme actions, however, only deal with the very worst cases. I believe that substantial inequities will remain. David Hargreaves makes it clear that he does not want to see a return to selection by general ability, social class or ethnicity, and recognizes that present policies may lead to increased covert selection. But, while he sees the problem as being concerned with selection on these criteria, I see all selection as potentially problematic. Indeed, selection according to how parents are able to present themselves in interview with headteachers seems to me to be potentially far more inequitable than selection by general ability. Our second area of difference is that David Hargreaves believes that it is possible to prevent such selection by stronger control over criteria for admissions, while I believe that it is very difficult to ensure that advantaged parents are not able to gain disproportionate advantage for their own children in a choice system. Moreover, the New Right source of the choice policy makes the introduction of tight controls over selection very unlikely. Selection of those parents and children who could show themselves to be the most 'deserving' was a central part

18


of the CTC selection criteria, and I believe it is implicit throughout the whole wider policy. Tony Blair's decision to choose a grant-maintained school for his son, and his successful selection by that school, is an interesting example. It was not presented as a choice for this particular type of school, not even a choice for a Roman Catholic school (for there are other Catholic schools nearer to his home), but a choice for a 'better' school. Tony Blair clearly perceives that there is a local hierarchy of schools and he has acted to try to ensure that his son attends one at the top of this hierarchy. Mr Blair and his wife have numerous advantages that they exploited. They are knowledgeable consumers. They have the time, money and energy to find information about a wide variety of schools. It is reasonable to assume that, at interview, Mr Blair and his wife were able to present themselves as more concerned, committed and supportive of their child's education than other parents who applied. They clearly have sufficient wherewithal to enable the boy to travel many miles across London to the school each day. It is a good example of the Matthew effect and, while tighter criteria on admissions would help, they would not counteract all of the advantages that the Blairs have. I believe it to be right that parents who care about their children's education should act in this way. As parents, they have a responsibility to act in the best interests of their children as they perceive them. But I would argue that it is the role of the state to ensure that all children receive an excellent education. The state's central concern in schooling should be with children, and I believe it should attempt to ensure that children from disadvantaged backgrounds should be helped to transcend these disadvantages. In many ways an excellent education is more important for children from families that do not place a high value on education than for those children from already advantaged homes.

Social segregation The second main area of concern about the government's current policies on choice is that it could lead to greater social segregation. We live in a multicultural and multi-ethnic society. I believe that the state should provide schooling that enables and encourages all children to participate fully in that society in a democratic way. Where Hargreaves has a bias towards encouraging diversity between schools, I have a bias towards encouraging all schools to foster social integration and mutual understanding between different groups in our society. This particular topic is not one where dogmatic positioning is appro-


19

priate, but is one where pragmatism and compromise is probably the best way forward. It is clear that choice increases the possibility of schools that serve a single ethnic group, religious or social class group. There is a possibility that such schools may decrease social integration and mutual understanding. Where is the balance to be drawn between the rights of parents to educate their children according to their own religious and philosophical beliefs and the rights of children and the wider society? I have already indicated that I believe that the state should have the child's best interests as its prime objective. It is recognized that in exceptional circumstances these best interests may override the rights of parents. The state has the duty to protect the child. Thus the state intervenes to ensure that children are not physically harmed by their parents. I believe that the state should also ensure that children are not harmed mentally. In extreme circumstances this would mean that the parents' wishes about schooling are overruled. The state should prohibit the establishment of schools that promote racism or intolerance of different democratically based philosophies. I do not believe that there are any circumstances where diversity should include the right to establish schools that indoctrinate children. But most calls for a greater diversity of religiously based schools do not fall within this category. They relate to the desire to broaden the diversity of religious schools beyond that envisaged in 1944 to include schools that represent the major world faiths. It is worth remembering that the 1944 settlement with the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church enabled Rab Butler to steer a potentially controversial Education Act through parliament during the war. Unlike many other countries, the vast majority of church schools were brought into the state maintained sector and, in return, the churches got compulsory religious education and daily acts of worship in all schools. Few would see this as the ideal system for the 1990s, but it is the point from which we must start. Since 1944 Britain has become far more ethnically diverse and there are now many more children whose religion of the home is not Christian. There is considerable power in the view that, in fairness to other religious groups, it should be possible for Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and others to establish their own state-funded schools. At present these parents feel forced to establish their own private schools (often at considerable financial sacrifice) to enable them to ensure that their children are educated according to their own wishes, while the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and some Jewish groups have their own state-funded schools. However, this interpretation of equity is essentially an individualistic view where parents seek what they believe to be best for their own children while ignoring or discounting the possible effect

20


of their actions on others. It overlooks the possible effects on other people's children — both Christian and non-Christian. A major consideration is that it is far from clear that society as a whole will benefit from some Muslim, Hindu or Christian children being educated separately from other children. In a pluralist and multi-ethnic country such as Britain, I believe there is a need for children to mix with those of other faiths and ethnicities if they are to begin to understand, accept and enjoy each other's differences. A greater diversity of faithbased schools could well lead to schools that are segregated ethnically as well as religiously, which will do little to decrease racism and intolerance. The establishment of more faith-based schools also has potential detrimental effects on those children of parents of that faith who remain within existing schools. It will only be possible to establish a Muslim, Sikh or Hindu school in geographical areas where there are sufficient potential pupils to ensure the school's long-term viability. There will always be many parents who do not have access to a faith-based school of their choice, and there will be others who do not wish their children to be in a segregated school yet still wish them to follow their religious faith. Both groups of parents may be potentially disadvantaged by the existence of faith-based schools, for other schools may be less likely to take into account the needs of their children. Thus, for example, while several existing county and church schools make arrangements for the regular worship demands of Islam and provide appropriate facilities, there may be less pressure on them to do so if the most vocal and force-

ful parents decide to place their children in a separate faith-based school.

Reforming the system A fair society will seek to ensure that all children receive the highest quality education possible. I believe that this is best done through a system of well-funded comprehensive schools. A broad and balanced curriculum for all children up to the age of 14 would overcome problems of 'late development' and early selection. After this age, children are mature enough to be allowed to choose some degree of specialization in their education alongside a core curriculum. Each school should offer a range of specialisms in most of the academic, technological and creative areas. The establishment of a range of schools, each offering a single specialism (as currently encouraged by government and by David Hargreaves) is highly likely to lead to greater differences in esteem and widened inequalities between schools. We have tried 'parity of esteem'

before and found that it does not work. Such a range of schools would


21

actually reduce opportunities for children to make mature choices about their futures. David Hargreaves' presentation of the 'politically left' viewpoint is too stark. There are few who believe that it is possible or desirable to return to the post-1979 position, and very few who would support a comprehensive system of the sort he describes. Most of those on the Left would agree with David Hargreaves that there has never been a full comprehensive system. Where a nominal comprehensive system existed, affluent and concerned parents were able to move their homes to be within the catchment areas of popular schools. There can be no return; what is needed is a system that allows some degree of choice, yet ensures that parents fight for a high-quality education for all children and not just their own. Education will always have to fight for funds from government in competition with other expenditure and investment. We need a system where articulate and knowledgeable citizens will fight hard for

education overall, rather than channel their energies into supporting just their own local school. In the case of the desire for genuine choice representing different religious beliefs, the solution is not straightforward. There needs to be a balance between the desires of individuals and society's need to ensure that schools do not become elitist or segregationist. Existing faith-based private schools have good grounds for asking for state support, as some 22 per cent of children in state-maintained schools are already in religious denominational schools. I believe that the most equitable and socially beneficial solution would be to discontinue voluntary aided and grant-maintained status and encourage all schools to adapt to and encourage the faiths of its pupils. Such a solution is not a political possibility. Thus, in the interests of equity, it is necessary to allow other voluntary bodies to have a major influence in state-maintained schools. The most appropriate way of doing this is through the LEAs (or some similar locally democratic bodies) rather than by any new type of grant-maintained or voluntary school. To prevent schools becoming elitist or segregationist these new schools should be under the general supervision of the LEAs, and should work in cooperation with other schools. They should have their own ethos and cover such additional curriculum areas as they see fit beyond the national curriculum. LEAs would act to monitor and maintain standards and to ensure that no religious or cultural entry conditions were imposed. They would also have the responsibility to ensure that schools make no attempt to indoctrinate children with particular beliefs but encourage a balanced debate on faiths. Such conditions would be too strict for some of the religious schools to accept, but they are necessary

if an equitable education system is to be available to all children.

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However, most choice is not concerned with the desire for a genuine diversity of schools; rather, it is linked to the belief that some schools are 'better' than others at offering a relatively standard product. In any system where families are to be offered a degree of choice it is inevitable that some schools will be more popular than others, and that there will be insufficient places in some popular schools for all who apply. The problem is reduced if ways are found to minimize the differences in popularity between schools, and to ensure that some children are not disadvantaged in the choice-making process. The legitimate desires of parents who are concerned about the schooling of their own children need to be harnessed to encourage high-quality education for all children. This is best done by clarifying the choice-making process and introducing clear, simple and unbiased selection criteria for oversubscribed schools. The suggestion that I made in my briefing paper for the National Commission on Education (Walford 1992), that Hargreaves attacks, started from the idea that no child should be allocated to a school. Instead, all families should be required to select three or four schools in order of preference. Funding should be made available for travel and other incidental costs to ensure that reasonable choices are not restricted by family income. Independent information centres and advisers should be established to encourage and help all families with this decisionmaking process. Where there are fewer applications than places available the first preference would be automatically granted. Schools would have no right to reject a child, and the power to exclude or expel a child would be removed from the school and given to the local authority. Where schools are oversubscribed, successful applicants should be selected randomly from those who apply. Random selection is essential, as it guarantees that some parents are not able to ensure the success of their own children by purchasing a home near to the school they aspire to use, or by being able to present themselves as more committed and concerned at interview. Exceptions to the principle of random selection should be at an absolute minimum, and might include children with specific physical disabilities being granted preference for a school with special facilities. Random selection introduces uncertainty, so it becomes necessary for concerned parents to work for high-quality schools for all children rather than devoting their efforts entirely towards the schooling of their own children. The concept of random selection is not new in education. There are now several school districts in the USA where a form of lottery is used to select successful applicants. In many of these the choice with random selection process has been introduced to aid ethnic integration, and random selection occurs for places available within given ethnic catego-


23

ries (Yanofsky and Young 1992). It has also occurred within the UK. Like other CTCs, the Djanogly City Technology College in Nottingham is required to select from the full ability range of the children who apply. For a few years, all children who applied were given a non-verbal test and were divided into nine ability levels on the basis of the results. Within each group children were selected randomly — with no account being taken of presence of siblings, the nearness of the college to the home (as long as the home was within the defined catchment area) or any other factors. While there was still the problem that only a proportion of the eligible families actually made a choice, random selection within ability bands provided the fairest possible selection process. Once all families make an active choice, and are given the means to make that choice meaningful, simple random selection will suffice. This example is important because it shows that individual popular schools could choose to select randomly without politicians having to take the decision to a wide electorate. The school and local people could choose to select in this way through a full local consultation process and a decision by the Secretary of State to amend the selection criteria. Sadly, this CTC no longer uses this method of selection. A new chair of the governing body, who had experience of selection in industry, changed

the system because he believed there were better ways of selecting the 'best' students within each ability group. Hargreaves is correct in suggesting that this may initially lead to more parents using the private sector. But the situation is not usually as simple as a choice between 'popular' schools, and 'unpopular' schools as he describes. There is often a continuum of schools where several would be acceptable but one is perceived as more desirable. Rejection by one does not necessarily imply that parents would (or could) leave the state sector. The benefit would be that parents would see it in their interests to try to ensure that all state-maintained schools in their area were of at least an acceptable standard. Requiring all families to make a choice will broaden and deepen concern for education. More uncertainty in selection will ensure that high-quality schooling for all children will become a political imperative. Somewhat paradoxically, requiring all families to make a choice, where there is uncertainty of that choice being granted, will reduce the importance of that choice. An extended hierarchy of schools is less likely

to develop and schools will be given the chance to ensure that they give the highest-quality education possible to all children.

CHAPTER 2

Weak choice, strong choice, and the new Christian schools*

Introduction The majority of recent research and debate about educational choice has been in terms of families selecting particular schools for their children from the range on offer. For most parents this means expressing a preference between the various state-maintained schools in their vicinity. Families are expected to make judgements about such factors as academic success, discipline, facilities and distance to be travelled, and then act tactically to try to ensure that the child is offered a place at a school that they consider acceptable. Tickell (1980) has defined this a 'weak' choice, for families are only able to express preferences about what is already on offer. It is like choosing from a menu at a restaurant. If grilled salmon is not on the menu then it cannot be ordered. Thus, with secondary schools, families are able to choose between their local county schools, voluntary aided schools or grant-maintained schools, but they have little say in determining the range or nature of what is locally available. Not only do they have to make their choices in the knowledge that popular schools may become oversubscribed and be unable to accept the child but they may also perceive all the schools on offer to be unsatisfactory. For these families 'weak' choice is seen as insufficient and there is a growing demand for 'strong' choice where families can help shape the choices on offer and can establish schools which meet their own specific requirements. At present 'strong' choice is only

available in Britain within the private sector, and various groups of * First published in J. Mark Halstead (ed.), Parental Choice and Education: Principles, vPolicies and Practices (London: Kogan Page), 1994. I am most grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for a grant to support this research, and to Colin Poyntz for his help in the preparation of this article.


25

parents have found themselves reluctantly forced into the private sector to obtain or establish a school which matches their religious or philosophical beliefs (Walford 1991c). Most of those seeking strong choice wish to have schools that reflect their religious beliefs. They perceive that mainstream Church of England and Roman Catholic families already have this right and ask that the right be extended to cover other religious groups. There is considerable power to their argument. Since the 1944 Education Act the vast majority of religious denominational primary and secondary schools in England and Wales have been an integral part of the state-maintained system as voluntary schools. These schools have all of their everyday running costs and teachers' salaries provided by the state, while the church organizations pay 15 per cent of any new capital expenditure required. At present about 28 per cent of primary pupils and 17 per cent of secondary pupils are in voluntary schools. Of the overall total of about 22 per cent of pupils, roughly 11 per cent are in Church of England schools, 9 per cent in Roman Catholic schools and less than 1 per cent in each of Jewish and Methodist schools. Additionally, nearly 2 per cent of pupils are in nonreligious voluntary schools which were originally established by charities, guilds or individual founders (see O'Keeffe 1986). But these current arrangements leave some groups highly dissatisfied, for they reflect the social and religious character of the 1940s rather than the 1990s. As Britain has gradually become more multi-ethnic and more diverse, there has been growing pressure to establish schools to serve these new groups. In theory, there are clear procedures for the establishment of new voluntary schools, and it is open to the followers of other Christian denominations or religious faiths to propose schools which could be incorporated within the state-maintained system. Yet, in practice, in spite of clear demand for such schools from some groups, there are currently (in 1994) no Muslim or Hindu schools in the state sector. Nor are there any state-supported schools representing any of the smaller or less traditional Christian groups or denominations. There are several reasons for this situation. The first is demographic, for increased pressure for new schools has occurred at a time of dramatic falling school rolls, such that LEAs have concentrated their attention on closing existing schools rather than supporting new ones. A second reason is that there is widespread unease about the idea of Muslim schools. In part, this is due to fears that an Islamic understanding of the role of women may be in conflict with the Western view of equal opportunities, but it also relates to a fear of fundamentalism of all shades. The continuing Salman Rushdie affair, with its book-burning imagery, has done little to help the cause of Muslim schools. Power to create new voluntary

26


schools is vested in the LEAs and the Secretary of State for Education, all of whom have preferred to avoid controversy and have generally refused applications for voluntary status on criteria officially unrelated to the religious basis of the proposed schools. As a result, some Muslim, Orthodox Jewish, Seventh-Day Adventist and evangelical Christian parents, in particular, have felt compelled to start their own private schools to enable their own wo rid-view to be taught (Walford 1991c).

Evangelical Christian schools One of the most interesting groups of private schools where parents are exercising strong choice is the new Christian schools. These schools share an ideology of biblically based evangelical Christianity which seeks to relate the message of the Bible to all aspects of present-day life whether personal, spiritual or educational. These schools have usually been set up by parents or a church group to deal with a growing dissatisfaction with what is seen as the increased secularism of the great majority of schools. The schools' aim to provide a distinctive Christian approach to every part of school life and the curriculum and, in most cases, parents have a continuing role in the management and organization of the schools. As there is no national organization overseeing these schools, it is difficult to trace their emergence, but it would appear that the first school of this type to open in Britain was in Rochester in 1969. A few more new Christian schools followed in the early 1970s, but it was not until the early 1980s that substantial growth occurred. In 1980 there were about ten such schools, but by 1992 there were nearly 90. The growth in popularity of these schools is shown in the increase in the number of pupils in each school as well as the total number of schools. Several schools which opened with just a handful of pupils have rapidly increased to cater for over a hundred (Deakin 1989). The main constraint on further expansion for many of these schools is a limitation in the physical space available in the existing premises rather than any lack of potential pupils. The demand for places must be understood in the light of evangelical Christianity at present being one of the fastest growing religious groups in Britain. For several reasons the exact number of schools is difficult to determine. One factor is that the number is continually changing as new schools open and existing ones close, but more important is the lack of any strict definition of what should count as a new Christian school or overall organization representing the schools. Some schools are linked to small Christian sects, and have no wish to be associated with any other


27

schools. Others believe their own situation is very different from the majority of new Christian schools, and do not believe there is any benefit to be gained from associating with them. About 65 of these schools have, however, come together through mutual recognition into a loose grouping through the Christian Schools' Trust. As the number of schools increased during the 1980s, several of the heads of the schools began to meet together regularly but informally for Christian fellowship and to discuss matters of mutual interest. More formal meetings and some conferences began to be held, and other teaching staff became involved, so that by 1988 a decision was made to establish a separate Christian Schools' Trust 'to promote and assist in the founding of further schools' (CST 1988). The Trust also provides assistance in the development of curriculum materials, helps coordinate the dissemination of such materials, provides some in-service training for teachers and organizes conferences. This chapter is principally concerned with schools which have an association with the Christian Schools' Trust, and the data presented here are derived from a larger study of these schools (Poyntz and Walford 1994). Eleven of these schools were selected and visited, and the heads were interviewed using a semi-structured format. In early 1993 a questionnaire was sent to the rest of the schools listed by the Christian Schools' Trust. Reminders and second questionnaires were subsequently sent to those who did not initially respond, and data were eventually obtained from 83 per cent of the schools in the group. Documents were also collected and analysed. Although there is variety within the schools involved with the Christian Schools' Trust, the image the Trust presents tends to be that of charismatic Christianity where considerable emphasis is given to the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as 'speaking in tongues' and 'healing'. New Christian schools without such an emphasis thus tend not to be included. The survey found that the schools ranged considerably in size from less than ten to nearly 200 children, with a total of more than 3,000 children in the 53 schools which responded to the survey. About half of the schools cater for primary age children only, but the rest usually teach the full compulsory school age range up to 16. Most of the schools were started either by churches or by groups of Christian parents and are designed to enable parents to provide a 'biblically based' Christian education for their children. The majority of the pupils are thus sons or daughters of active Christians, but most of the schools are also prepared to accept a proportion of pupils from non-Christian families. This includes a very small proportion of pupils from Muslim, Hindu or Sikh families. As one of the examples below indicates, a few of the schools

28


were established with Christian evangelism as an explicit aim, and accept a large proportion of pupils from non-Christian families. In the main, these schools are not well funded and do not serve traditional social class users of the private sector. A few do charge fees that compare with other private preparatory or secondary schools and are able to provide full salaries to teachers at the nationally agreed levels. But the majority of the schools have low indicative fees or rely on donations from parents that are related to their ability to pay. These schools often live a life of financial uncertainty or, as they would explain it, the schools survive 'on faith'. Most of the schools have a mixture of full- and parttime teachers with those working part-time often being parents and receiving no pay at all. Of those teachers working full-time, about 20 per cent received no payment, sometimes because they did not require any additional family income or sometimes because they 'lived by faith' and relied on voluntary gifts from parents, the church or others. Where

teachers were paid, the majority were on lower salaries than they would have been in the state sector. The flavour and diversity of the schools is best understood through a few example descriptions. The following accounts are not selected to be 'typical'but to indicate the range and variability. The first example is one of the larger schools within the group which opened in September 1984 with 24 children, and now has expanded to cater for about 130 children aged between 5 and 16. Its 100 primary-age pupils are housed in a redundant 1950s church, situated in a council housing estate. The buildings have been adapted and renovated to provide classrooms, offices, hall, staffroom, and so on, and now look very similar to many state-maintained primary schools. The facilities are of a reasonable standard, but the school is not lavishly equipped. It does not provide the form of elite education often associated with private schools. This school was established by a group of four local biblically based evangelical Christian fellowships and serves families of mixed social-class origins. It provides an education which centres around the desire to teach children to grow in a personal relationship with God. Its curriculum is integrated and topic-based rather than subject-based. Within the overall topic of Justice and Righteousness, for example, the top juniors might study the Stewardship of Creation, including pollution of the environment, destruction of rain forests and similar issues. The focus is on the child knowing God, knowing his created world and knowing other people. The school has six full-time staff, about six others sharing classes on a morning or afternoon basis, and about 20 more part-time staff. Although the school has a few children from non-Christian families, the majority are from fami-

lies within the local fellowships. The general expectation is that parents


29

with children at the school will donate 10 per cent of their income, but this does not allow teachers to be paid full salaries. Payment to teaching staff is thus made according to need. A second school linked to the Christian Schools' Trust provides a clear contrast. It is situated in an area with a large local Asian population, and the majority of the 120 primary-age pupils at the school are from Muslim, Hindu or Sikh families. Only 10 per cent are from Christian homes. Yet all of the teachers are Christian, and the head's aim is that the school should provide 'a good education and a Christian education'. The school has set fees which allow the staff to be paid on the same salary scale as teachers in the state system. Non-Christian parents choose this school for their children because of its ordered and disciplined environment and because they prefer their children to be in a religiously based school (even if it is not their own religion), rather than the secular ambience of the local state-maintained schools. The school uses an old church building and is reasonably spacious, with most of the classes in separate rooms. However, two of the classes have to share a large hall separated from one another by temporary roomdividers. At playtime the children walk to the local park some ten minutes away. The Christian emphasis is evident in all areas of school life, and is reflected in the wall posters with biblical quotations that decorate the classroom walls. In interview the head emphasized the importance of the Creation story to his understanding of the Christian message and has spent two years speaking about Genesis 1 in the school assemblies. A rather different sub-group of schools within the Christian Schools' Trust group has had a controversial history and suffered badly in the press following poor reports from HM Inspectors during 1985 when at least four new Christian schools were served with notices of complaint. Areas of concern within these reports included inadequate and unsafe accommodation, lack of resources, unstimulating environments and inadequate curriculum. In all of these four reports, however, the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) teaching programme used by the schools was a common area of concern. ACE teaching materials and methods were an important part of the growth of some of these new Christian schools, for the existence of ACE enabled small groups of Christian parents to contemplate providing allage Christian schooling for their children at low cost and with little or no teaching experience required by those adults in charge. According to the survey, about a third of the schools in the group make significant use of ACE materials, and a few use little else. ACE is also important where Christian families are geographically isolated, for about 100 families use it as the foundation of their home-schooling of their children.

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As explained in detail elsewhere (Walford 1991c), ACE is a highly standardized system of individualized instruction developed in the USA, where all of the information, materials and equipment necessary to set up and run a school are provided. According to Rose (1988), by about 1987 ACE was used in 5,000 schools in the USA and a further 600 schools in 86 other countries. Rose (1988: 117) describes ACE as 'having taken the scientific management of schools to the extreme. Their model more closely approximates to that of the factory or office: there are "supervisors" and "monitors" rather than "teachers"; student "offices" rather than desks; and "testing stations" that create "quality control".'Pupils work on their individual Packs of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs) in separate cubicals, which are designed to limit student interaction by having vertical screens between pupils. Students are able to gain the atten-

tion of their supervisor or monitor by raising one of two or three small flags which are provided for each pupil. In practice, the heavy criticism of the method from Inspectors and others has meant that many of the newer schools in the group have never used ACE. Schools are now involved in developing their own materials and, even where used, in most schools ACE methods no longer dominate the learning process. However, some of the schools associated with the Trust still see ACE as central to their vision of Christian education, and believe that its emphasis on ordered independent learning rather than whole-class teaching reflects and reinforces Christian discipline and the Christian message.

Why start a school? It is striking that the new Christian schools are the result of grass-roots movements in education which stem from the belief that education is the responsibility of the parent and the church rather than the state. For example, in its prospectus, one of the schools stated: The basic responsibility for education lies with parents. The wellknown proverb 'Train a child the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it' (Proverbs 22.6) is addressed primarily to parents. There are regular parents' meetings to encourage a close relationship between home and school. The school is seen as an extension of the values and beliefs taught within the home and church. Deakin (1989), who is head of one of the schools, argues that the human-centred philosophy which dominates the majority of schools in this country is evident throughout the entire curricu-


31

him of those schools, and that it shapes the value systems and philosophical frameworks within which all the disciplines are taught. Further: 'Our schools tend to reflect our society, where there is increasing secularisation, a rising materialism and excessive individualism. Alongside this there is unremitting evidence of a profound lack of respect for authority, and chaos in the area of personal values and morality.' Religious education itself is often of particular concern to the parents involved in these schools. It is argued that the secularization of most schools has led to a commitment to a multifaith approach to religious education, where religions are examined through their observable characteristics rather than in terms of faith, belief and commitment. This approach is seen to encourage a secular and aridly sceptical view of life and to devalue all faiths other than that of secular humanism. Such a view was common among all of those interviewed. For example, one respondent explained the perceived need for a specifically Christian school in the following way: We believe in a Christ-centred curriculum. That there should not be a split, a divide, between the home and family and the school — that their education should be an extension of what they learn at home. We obviously have Christ and the Bible at the centre at home, and we want them to have the same at school. I think the divide between Christian education and state education has become far, far greater over recent years — humanism is taught And not only in the curriculum, but in terms of what children learn in the playground . . . Interviews with heads and others involved in setting up schools showed that there was considerable variety in the precipitating reasons and in the processes by which they had been established. This was explained in greater detail by one well-informed head: At one time a lot of Christian schools started because there was a lot happening in other schools that Christians weren't happy with. So there were the obvious things such as Hallowe'en, some of the areas of sex education, obvious areas of RE, obvious areas of worship, evolution, creation. And parents would say this is causing concern. I mean I could give you a list of things that have happened even recently, and locally. We've had children in schools where they've had a whole day given over to fortune-telling. We've had children putting needles into dolls . . . There are schools where they've been making prayer mats and praying to monkey gods. Now these are clear things that as Christians we get concerned

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about and object to. We also object that evolution is taught as a fact and not as a theory . . . The Bible says that we should train up our children in the way they should go . . . I don't have to have a special reason to put my children, as a father, in a Christian school. For I am simply doing what God wants me to do - to train the children up - my children - in the way that they should go. Everything is based on God's will. Now how could I obey that command to train up my children the way they should go when so much of their five-day a week schooling is against those standards, or at the very least is not based on them? So for that positive reason I need to put my children in a place where the standards and attitudes and the ethos are in sympathy with what I would teach at home. It is the family, church and school that work together for the child . . . So there are very positive ways why the school started. We always share it with parents in terms of two ps. It is protection, but not in a negative sense. All good parents will put the medicines out of the way, they will put the stair-gate on, they will put the safety-belts on in the car and then, often, they will let them go to school without any sense of protection. And the second p is preparation. We prepare them to be full citizens in all ways. If they want their faith developing we help them with that, but we clearly try to develop them to at least be aware of all the different debates and standards that they need to be aware of when they leave school.

Conclusion Once implemented, the 1993 Education Act will allow a wider range of voluntary bodies to start new grant-maintained schools. As long as they are prepared to accept certain regulations, the way has been opened for schools run by evangelical Christians, Muslims, Hindus or other religious groups. Such new grant-maintained schools will have to teach the national curriculum, be open to children of all faiths and have a more broadly based governing body than many of them have at present, but in return, they will receive funding for all of their recurrent costs and 85 per cent of initial capital expenditure. Since the new Christian schools have been active in campaigning for such a change (Walford 1991c),

several now have plans to make applications to re-establish themselves as new grant-maintained schools. The idea that the state should fund a variety of different schools according to parents' wishes has a powerful simplicity which has welded


33

together a remarkable range of people and organizations from the political Right and Left. Freedom of choice has become a powerful ideological force — but it is one that has been used partly to conceal the Right's political objective of a more individualistic and inequitable educational system. At an individual level, it is perfectly right and proper that parents should wish to make choices on behalf of their children for their perceived benefit. A good parent will wish his or her own children to receive the best education that is available. But what is good for the individual is not always good for society as a whole or for certain less privileged groups or individuals within that society. Individual choices, and the sum effect of individual choices, may have benefits for those making choices, but may also harm others who are less able or willing to participate in the choice-making process (Walford 1993b). The presence of private schools, for example, may harm state schools by taking out from the state sector those parents who are most likely to ensure that high standards of provision and teaching are maintained. The education provided in state schools may thus deteriorate with the exit of those parents with the greatest concern or financial resources. However, it is the duty of the state to ensure that the less privileged and less powerful are not harmed by the actions of the more privileged and more powerful — a duty which may mean that individual freedoms are constrained for the benefit of the society as a whole. In practice, much of the present government's educational policy will increase injustice and inequity, and lead to a hierarchy of schools which will provide very different educational experiences for children of different abilities, social classes and ethnic groups. Whether all of the participants recognize it or not, the new 1993 legislation giving state funding to Christian and other religiously based schools is part of this wider political programme. The solution is not straightforward, for there needs to be a balance between the desires of individuals and society's need to ensure that schools do not become elitist or segregationist. The Christian schools are not themselves elitist. Some of them currently serve children from the most deserving segments of our society, and most of them are prepared to accept a small number of non-Christian children where they have room. Furthermore, the schools have good grounds for asking for state support, as some 22 per cent of children in state-maintained schools are already in religious denominational schools. In the interests of equity, it is necessary to allow other voluntary bodies to establish state-maintained schools, but the most appropriate way of doing this is through the LEAs rather than by any new type of grant-maintained or voluntary school.

To prevent schools becoming elitist or segregationist these new schools

34


should be under the general supervision of the LEAs, and should work in cooperation with other schools. They should have their own ethos and cover such additional areas as they see fit beyond the national curriculum. LEAs would act to monitor and maintain standards and to ensure that no religious or cultural entry conditions were imposed. Such conditions would be too strict for some of the Christian schools to accept, but they are necessary if an equitable education system is to be available to all children.

CHAPTER 3

Durkheim, democracy and diversity: some thoughts on recent

changes in England and Wales*

Introduction Throughout most of the late 1980s and 1990s educational policy in England and Wales was based on the idea that diversity between schools was to be encouraged. In his Foreword to the 1992 White Paper on Choice and Diversity (DfE 1992: hi), the then prime minister, John Major, made his support for the idea clear. One of his four 'bullet-point' foundations for the White Paper was 'It enhances parental choice by simplifying the creation of grant-maintained schools and by opening the way to

greater variety in education through the formation of new schools and by encouraging specialisation.' The 1993 Education Act that followed the White Paper included legislation that, for the first time, enabled groups of sponsors to apply directly to central government for support for a diversity of schools - schools that might promote particular religious or philosophical beliefs. The way was supposedly now more open for state-funded Muslim, evangelical Christian, or Sikh schools, as well as for those that might support transcendental meditation or yoga. The 1993 Education Act thus marked a very significant change in the nature and range of schools that the state was prepared to support. Perhaps surprisingly, the writings of Durkheim can offer considerable insight into the potential consequences of such a development. Following the introduction, this chapter has three sections. The first section is a simple introduction to Durkheim's views on the state and democracy in relation to education. The second describes the process by which recent educational changes in England and Wales occurred and the implications of such a potential for diversity of schools. The third * Published in WS.F. Pickering (ed.), Etnile Durkheim: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists. Volume VI (London: Routledge), 2001, pp. 543-59.

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begins an exploration of the insights that might be gained from study of Durkheim's ideas of nearly a century ago.

Durkheim, education and the state Durkheim argued that society can survive only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity and that 'education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child, from the beginning, the essential similarities that collective life demands' (Durkheim 1922a/t. 1956a: 70). On the other hand, he continues, 'without a certain diversity all co-operation would be impossible; education assures the persistence of the necessary diversity by being itself diversified and specialized'. This diversity was easily visible to Durkheim: Even today, do we not see education vary with social class, or even with locality? That of the city is not that of the country, that of the middle classes not that of the worker. Would one say that this organization is not morally justifiable, that one can see in it only a survival destined to disappear? This proposition is easy to defend. It is evident that the education of our children should not depend upon the chance of their having been born here or there, of some parents rather than others. But even though the moral conscience of our time would have received, on this point, the satisfaction that it expects, education would not, for all that, become more uniform. Even though the career of each child would, in large part, no longer be predetermined by blind heredity, occupational specialization would not fail to result in a great pedagogical diversity. Each occupation, indeed, constitutes a milieu suigeneris which requires particular aptitudes and specialized knowledge, in which certain ideas, certain practices, certain modes of viewing things, prevail; and as the child must be prepared for the function that he will be called upon to fulfil, education beyond a certain age, can no longer remain the same for all those to whom it applies. (Durkheim 1922a/t. 1956a: 68) Within his discussion of education, Durkheim thus appears to include two aspects. In modern terminology, these might be expressed in terms of (1) some sort of 'common culture' and (2) vocational training for particular occupations. Education is seen as consisting in these twin purposes and the balance that Durkheim sees between them leads to his well-known definition: Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and to


37

develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and the special milieu for which he is specifically destined. (Durkheim 1922a/t.l956a: 71) It is easy to recognize that Durkheim's sexist language is the product of his time (or the translator's time), as is his focus here on children's rather than lifelong learning. But his apparent acceptance of the idea of diversity and children being 'destined' for particular occupations needs more explication. Central to any discussion of Durkheim's views on diversity and education must be his understanding of the nature of the state and of democracy. Neither of these areas of Durkheim's thought are as well elaborated as we might wish, but it is well known that Durkheim viewed the state as a collection of special groups qualified to think and act on behalf of society (Lukes 1975: 269). The state refers to an administrative staff or officialdom which is formally entrusted with the function of government (Giddens 1986: 2). Durkheim's definition of democracy is equally controversial, for he rejects the traditional theory of democracy where the mass of the population have a direct (but limited) role in the exercise of government and defines democracy in terms of the relationship between the differentiated political society, or the state, and the other institutional structures of society. For Durkheim, a democracy has two primary characteristics: the existence of a close, and two-way, communication between government and the governed; and the increasing extension of the contacts and ties of the state with other sectors of the society (Giddens 1986: 7). What is crucial in relation to education is that Durkheim sees within a democracy a central role for what he calls 'occupational associations'. These occupational associations were, in Durkheim's vision, to be far more than unions. They were to be national public institutions that included within them, or surpassed, the smaller and independent unions of workers and employers. They were to cover broad industrial categories and to be the means of ensuring close and sufficient contact between 'interdependent organs'. He argues: An occupational activity can be effectively regulated only by a group close enough to it to know how it operates, what its needs are, and how it is likely to change. The only one that meets all these conditions is the one which might be formed by all the agents of the same industry united and organized into a single body. This is what we call the 'corporation' or 'occupational group'. (Durkheim 1893b/t.l986: 76)

38


The occupational associations are seen as the intermediaries between the state and the individual and a principal medium through which a wide range of activities of the state are channelled to the rest of society. On one hand, they are able to check the emergence of an autocratic state separate from the people, while on the other, they ensure that the state is not absorbed by society. Durkheim believed that regional differences in culture and interests were becoming weaker and would be eventually eradicated with advanced industrialization. In contrast, work and professional life were increasing in importance as an indicator of diversity and were destined to become the basis of political structure. Thus Durkheim rejected regionally based electoral systems and he would have replaced them with an electoral system based on occupational associations. One hundred years on, one can see the difficulties of these ideas — their many limitations and impracticalities. Obviously Durkheim did not foresee the globalization of economies, the growth of multinational companies and the rapid rate of technological and social change that has occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. Again, the very concept of 'professional life' is now seen to have severe limitations and to be an idealized perception. However, within Durkheim's framework for a democratic state with a central place for occupational associations, his views on education are not as reactionary as they might first appear. If each occupation is seen as constituting 'a milieu suigeneris which requires particular aptitudes and specialized knowledge, in which certain ideas, certain practices, certain modes of viewing things, prevail' (Durkheim 1893b/t.l986: 77), then that aspect of education that is beyond a certain age differentiated is not simply vocational in a utilitarian sense but part of political education. The diversity in educational provision envisaged by Durkheim is designed to enable individuals to play their part in his version of a democratic society. The diversity that Durkheim accepts might thus be seen to have two aspects: first, vocationally orientated training which might, in modern times, start at say 14; and, second, a political education which might recognize the particular social class, ethnic and gender positions of young people. There is much potential merit in this sort of diversity. Let us now examine Durkheim's views on the respective duties of families and the state with regard to education. Durkheim firmly rejects the idea that children primarily 'belong to' their parents, and that education can be seen as essentially a private and personal affair. Under this view the state would have a minimum role, limited to serving as an auxiliary to, or substitute for, families. In contrast, Durkheim believes that education has above all a collective function and that society must be 'the reference point by which education must direct its action'. He argues


39

that each society must assure, among its citizens, a sufficient community of ideas and sentiments, without which any society is impossible. He assigns this role to education and argues that education cannot be 'completely abandoned to the arbitrariness of private individuals' (Durkheim 1922a/t. 1956a: 80). It is the responsibility of the state to remind the teacher constantly of the ideas, the sentiments that must be impressed upon the child to adjust him to the milieu in which he must live. If it were not always there to guarantee that pedagogical influence be exercised in a social way, the latter would necessarily be put to the service of private beliefs, and the whole nation would be divided and would break down into incoherent multitudes of little fragments in conflict with one another. (Durkheim 1922a/t. 1956a: 79) Durkheim's belief in the efficacy of education needs to be firmly questioned — even in his time the school was only one of many influences on young people, but in the present day the message from the school is surrounded by a multitude of cacophonous voices. However, the real problem is what is supposed to be included in the 'ideas and sentiments' that are commonly held within society. Durkheim admits that 'this moral unity is not at all points what it should be' and that French society of the time was 'divided by divergent and even sometimes contradictory conceptions' (1922a/t.l956a: 81), but he argues that at the basis of our civilization are a number of principles which, implicitly or explicitly, are common to all. These are: respect for reason, for science, and for ideas and sentiments which are at the base of democratic morality. 'It is the role of the state to outline these essential principles, to have them taught in its schools, to see to it that nowhere are children left ignorant of them, that everywhere they should be spoken of with the respect which is due to them' (Durkheim 1922a/t.l956a: 81). According to Durkheim, while the state must remain in control of what goes on in schools, it need not be a monopoly supplier. He states that one may believe that progress in school is easier and more immediate where a certain margin is left to individual initiative; for the individual is more ready to innovate than the state. Yet the fact that the state, in the public interest, must allow to be opened schools other than those for which it has direct responsibility does not mean that it must wash its hands of what goes on in them. On the contrary, the education given in them must remain subject to its control. It is

40


not even permissible that the function of the educator be undertaken by someone who does not possess special qualifications, about whose validity alone the state can be the judge. Undoubtedly, the bounds within which its intervention should be confined cannot be determined once and for all, but the principle of intervention is indisputable. There is no school that can claim the right freely to impart an anti-social education. (Durkheim 1922a/t. 1956a: 80)

New diversity in England and Wales Early steps towards greater diversity of schools can be seen in the 1988 Education Reform Act for England and Wales, which is said to have introduced quasi-market mechanisms into schooling. By giving families greater choice about the maintained-sector schools that they wish to use, and by funding schools largely according to the number of students on roll, many schools (in particular, secondary schools) have been forced to become competitive to survive. One claim that was made at the time was that such competition would lead to a greater diversity of schools as they developed their own 'marketing niches', and strove to differentiate themselves from their neighbours. But this has not been the result of the Act. Rather than developing true diversity, schools have tended to compete on the same dimensions, leading to a hierarchy of schools where some are seen to be 'better' than others (Walford 1996a). This was an almost inevitable result, given that England and Wales have a fetishistic attachment to hierarchy and to prioritizing 'academic'learning, and the government did little to change the supply side of the new quasi-market that it introduced. While the concept of grantmaintained schools was new, the reality was that existing LEA schools were simply transmuted into another species. Early research has shown that grant-maintained schools generally offered little that was distinctive beyond peripheral matters such as smarter uniforms (Halpin et al. 1997; Power et al. 1994). It has been widely argued that the policy was more concerned with reducing the power and influence of LEAs than with establishing a genuine diversity of schools from which parents could choose. The only area where the 1988 Education Reform Act might be seen to have attempted to enhance genuine diversity of schools was in its clauses on City Technology Colleges (CTCs). In this case, the Act was merely making legislative adjustments to a programme that was already under way — albeit in a very truncated form. The CTC programme had been launched in 1986 and the first CTC in Solihull was announced in


41

February 1987. As the CTCs are officially private schools they required no new legislation; the government could simply use its existing powers to give funding to private schools as it wished. The ease with which funding could be made had both positive and negative features, for it meant that another government could equally quickly cease to fund the CTCs if it wished. Even after the 1987 re-election of a Conservative government, fears of a future Labour government led to clauses in the 1988 Act that began to protect the investment of sponsors. As with grant-maintained schools, the early evidence suggests that they offer little that is radically different from other schools (even in technology) and have yet to move away from traditional modes of teaching and learning (Walford and Miller 1991; Whitty et al. 1993). It was not until the 1993 Education Act that significant changes were made to increase the supply side of the quasi-market. As a result of that Act, since April 1994, it has been possible for groups of parents or independent sponsors to apply to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in England, or the Secretary of State for Wales, to establish their own grant-maintained schools. Additionally, the trustees of existing private schools can apply for their schools to become grant-maintained. These new sponsored grant-maintained schools differ from existing grant-maintained schools in that sponsors have to pay for at least 15 per cent of costs relating to the provision of a site for the school and/or school buildings. In return for this financial contribution, through the school's trust deed and instrument of government, the sponsors are able to ensure that the school retains its original purpose. In particular, restrictions on making a 'significant change in the religious character' of these grant-maintained schools are explicitly built into the Act. Additionally, the composition of the governing body allows the sponsors to ensure that the religious objectives of the school are maintained and that the religious beliefs and practices of teaching staff are taken into consideration in appointments. Where an existing private school becomes grant-maintained, teachers are not automatically bound to the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act (1991). The schools do, of course, have to teach the national curriculum, but special arrangements for the teaching of religious education can be detailed in the trust deed, and different arrangements can be made with regard to the character of collective religious worship. The admissions process allows preference to be given to children from families with particular beliefs in the same way as in existing Roman Catholic or Church of England voluntary schools. This important change in the way in which schools can be established is, in part, the result of a lengthy campaign by a diversity of pressure groups representing religious and other interests. In recent years calls for

42


greater diversity of schools funded by the state have come to be associated with the New Right, and many have seen the 1993 Education Act and its preceding White Paper Choice and Diversity (DflE 1992) as epitomizing New Right ideology. However, as I have made clear elsewhere (Walford 1991c), there have been many different groups with a variety of political positions that have campaigned for a greater diversity of schools to be state-funded. The Christian Schools Campaign, in particular, was at the forefront of the political campaigning for the right to obtain state funding for faith-based schools and can be seen to have had a significant effect on the way in which the legislation has been framed (Walford 1995a and 1995c). This particular pressure group was linked to the new Christian schools which share an ideology of biblically based, evangelical Christianity which seeks to relate the message of the Bible to all aspects of presentday life whether personal, spiritual or educational. These schools are usually poorly funded, having been set up by parents or a church group to deal with a growing dissatisfaction with what is seen as the increased secularization of the great majority of schools. About 65 of these schools came together through mutual recognition into a loose grouping through the Christian Schools' Trust. As the number of new Christian schools increased, a decision was made in 1988 to establish the Christian Schools' Trust to promote and assist in the founding of further schools. The Trust now provides assistance in the development of curriculum materials, helps coordinate the dissemination of such materials, provides some in-service training for teachers and organizes conferences. By early 1989 the Christian Schools Campaign was established to represent the schools in the political arena, specifically aiming to achieve public recognition for these schools and access to public funding. The nature of the schools involved with the Christian Schools' Trust and Christian Schools Campaign has been described in some detail elsewhere (Walford 1994b; Poyntz and Walford 1994); here it is sufficient to note that the schools do not serve the 'traditional'private school market and are not natural allies of the New Right. Many of the schools have progressive fee structures that are linked to ability of parents to pay, and wish to be open to wide social intake. Some Muslim education groups have presented another, and rather different, pressure for a greater diversity of schools to be funded by the state. As the number of Muslim children in Britain gradually increased, so did the calls from some Muslim groups for separate Muslim schools. This call focused especially on separate secondary schools for girls. As might be expected, Muslims hold a variety of views on the desirability of establishing separate schools, but there are currently more than 30


43

private Muslim schools in operation in Britain. The growing emphasis on choice during 1980s led some Muslim campaigning groups to be increasingly vocal in their demands for state funding for such private Muslim schools, and several schools applied for voluntary-aided status. In their desire to obtain state funding, the interests of these various groups also coincided with those of the New Right who wished for further diversity in educational provision (e.g. Cox and Marks 1979), selection of pupils for particular schools (e.g. Flew 1991; Marks 1991) and the increased privatization of schooling (e.g. Sexton 1987; 1992). It also gave the government the chance to expand the grant-maintained sector at a time when applications from county and voluntary schools were low. John Patten, Secretary of State for Education from 1992 to 1994 and a practising Roman Catholic, was highly supportive of Christian schools, for their demands for state support chimed with his own desires for 'choice and diversity' (D£E 1992) and his emphasis on 'spiritual and moral values'. Whilst there was a firm emphasis in the White Paper on the need for a high priority to be given to the removal of surplus places, it was argued that this would actually give opportunities for new grant-maintained schools to be created in response to parental demand. Once the 1993 legislation had become law, it was expected that those who had been influential in the process of pushing for change would be active in proposing the establishment of new grant-maintained schools. But, in practice, the whole process has proved to be far more complicated and time-consuming than any of the promoters of the legislation envisaged. The result is that there have been far fewer proposals than expected, and all have met with considerable difficulties. Various schools or sponsor groups have made some initial contact with the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS) since April 1994. Some of these contacts made newspaper headlines — for example, the claim in March 1995 that Manchester Grammar School might become grant-maintained — but most received little comment beyond that in local newspapers. By the end of 1994 around 400 copies of the general information had been sent out, and about 80 schools or groups had made some contact and were considered 'active'. But the level of activity varied greatly, with very few progressing beyond preliminary enquiries. By July 1994 only three schools had provided the FAS with outline proposals: Oak Hill School in Bristol (an evangelical Christian school); Guru Nanak school in Hillingdon; and a group from Exmoor who wished to fund a small school for academically able children. The proposal from the Sikh school ran into early difficulties and was withdrawn in 1994. In July 1994 the FAS wrote to Oak Hill School saying that it was 'likely to object' to their proposals. In August 1994 the FAS wrote to the Exmoor group with a

44


similar message. The Exmoor group heeded the warning and withdrew, while Oak Hill School proceeded and formally published its proposals in October 1994. These were closely followed by a proposal for a new Leeds Jewish high school, published in October 1994, and two proposals from existing private Roman Catholic grammar schools in the Wirral, Merseyside, in November 1994. The Leeds Jewish high school proposal was eventually withdrawn as the sponsors were unable to obtain a site. The decision on the two Catholic schools took much longer than expected, but a positive response was made in July 1995. Oak Hill's proposals were finally rejected in December 1995. By the end of 1995 about 40 schools or sponsor groups were said to be actively interested, and might eventually bring forward proposals, but there were few firm contestants. Those showing strong interest included another Jewish group which was proposing a Jewish primary school in Borhamwood, Hertfordshire; two further Catholic schools in Liverpool with links to the two already given grant-maintained status; and a Transcendental Meditation school in Skelmersdale. With a general election due at any time and a change of government expected, there was, as 1996 progressed, an increase in interest from existing private schools and other groups wishing to obtain state funding. It was thought (incorrectly) that an incoming Labour government would probably halt the scheme, and that an application for transfer of status would have to be completed quickly. By the time of the general election in May 1997 a total of twenty schools had published proposals. At this time, there had been eight successful English applications, only two applications had been rejected by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, but one had been withdrawn and there were still nine applications outstanding. Some of these had been with the Secretary of State for over a year. At the same time, a further 15 or so promoters were in serious discussion with the FAS. In Wales, the numbers of applications and approvals was even smaller. By May 1997 only one existing private school had become grantmaintained, and this was a small Roman Catholic school in Denbigh, Clwyd, which at that point had only 150 pupils. Very unusually, the school has some boarders who continue to pay fees for their boarding but no longer have to pay for their tuition. The school plans to expand to about 250 pupils. Two other applications were still under consideration by the Secretary of State for Wales. Strangely, these two were separate applications to establish a new school in Usk, near Cardiff. A single group of proposers broke into two groups due to disagreements between them and submitted competing bids for a comprehensive secondary school in a town where children currently have to travel considerable dis-


45

tances to the nearest secondary school. A decision is awaited. Only one other existing Welsh private school was said to be 'nibbling' at the idea of grant-maintained status. In both England and Wales, the overall policy has thus not been as successful as the original supporters of the 1993 legislation had hoped. Very few schools or sponsors have managed to meet the demands made on them during the application process. Many fell by the wayside before their applications were passed to the Secretary of State for consideration, and only eight schools in England and one in Wales had successfully become grant-maintained under these new regulations by May 1997. All of the sponsored grant-maintained schools so far have involved the transfer of an existing private school into the state-maintained sector. There have been no cases of a new school being started from scratch. The practice has thus not yet fulfilled the potential within the legislation. Agencies of the state have acted in such a way that diversity has been only weakly encouraged. All the new grant-maintained schools so far have been of a type close to existing state-maintained schools, and none has begun to challenge the constraints laid down by the state. The way in which the legislation has been operated has important implications in terms of the nature of the state and in a democratic society, as does the legislation itself.

Durkheim and new grant-maintained schools We have seen that for Durkheim schooling had an essential social function, and the state was thus forced to be concerned about education. Schooling was primarily concerned with the broad national objectives of social integration and the formation of active citizens. These ideas cannot be accepted without question. They are essentially part of a modernist project, and many critics would now argue that in a postmodern, globalized world such aims for education are inappropriate and the objectives unattainable. Donald (1992) for example, has argued that postmodernity has led to a process of cultural diversification and fragmentation and that the idea that education can transmit a common culture is now obsolete. Usher and Edwards (1994) have similarly argued that global postmodernity has led to a pluralization of cultures that fundamentally undermine the modernist goal of national identity. They argue that the progressive replacement of standardized educational systems by such developments as virtual networks will mean that schools will cease to act as dispensers of rational, disciplined knowledge and fail to act as agents of socialization. National objectives in education, they argue, will

46


be limited to 'fulfilling the requirements of the economy under conditions of global competition' (Usher and Edwards 1994: 175). Such arguments have to be taken seriously, for the role of schooling in social integration has undoubtedly decreased from its postwar watershed, and other agencies (in particular, the media and advertising) have promoted a cultural form that has elements of both internationalism and plurality. However, the transition from modernity to postmodernity is far from complete, and the current conditions in modern Western societies may be more conducive to education acting as an integrating social force than they were in the last century when this function was explicit. As Andy Green has argued: The postmodern world is, generally, both more diverse and more homogeneous than modernity. Globalization, as cultural theorists contend, has not only provided new means for local and particular cultures to express and identify themselves; it has also made them more present and more visible to other cultures, thus enhancing the opportunities for common discourse. (Green 1997: 185) Change has occurred, but there are distinct continuities. Schooling is likely to be a familiar experience for many years to come, and there is little evidence that schools will be replaced by learning networks or any similar development in the near future. Neither is the extent of diversity with which schooling has to cope anything new. When national educational systems were developing in Europe, the peoples they served were deeply divided by class, religion, gender, language and ethnicity. As Durkheim himself has shown (Durkheim 1938a/t. 1977a), the explicit and dominant function of national educational systems was to act as an integrating social force and to forge the fledgling nation-state into a coherent and solid entity. It is instructive to remember that at the moment of unification in Italy, when national education was first introduced, less than 3 per cent of the population spoke Italian (Hobsbawn 1994: 60; Green 1997). In comparison, the extent of diversity in English schools at present looks minimal. The ability for education to act as a force for social integration is still strong, despite trends in globalization and postmodernity. Indeed, some elements of postmodernity might be seen to have been anticipated by Durkheim. For example, the privatization of provision of education is a feature of postmodern society (Hinkson 1991), yet Durkheim saw no reason for the state becoming a monopoly supplier of education. While the state might provide some schooling, it is likely that he would have seen no particular problem in the principle of having sponsors establishing their own schools. However, he is clear that the state must ensure that it still controls what is taught in those schools. Just


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because the state allows others to establish schools does not mean that it must 'wash its hands of what goes on in them'. Durkheim admits that it is difficult to determine where the line should be drawn between what the state allows and what it prohibits, but it is essential that a line be drawn somewhere. In particular, it is important that no school should be allowed to impart anti-social education. Over the past few years the state, in the form of officials at the FAS and the Department of Education and Employment (DfEE), has gradually developed a series of criteria that are applied to sponsors wishing to start a new school. The most important of these are the ability to find substantial financial support for their plans and to be able to show that there is sufficient demand for the school without reducing the number of children in nearby schools too greatly. So far the only schools to have achieved sponsored grant-maintained status have been of a similar type to existing grant-maintained schools — Roman Catholic grammar schools or Jewish primary schools. While some Muslim, Sikh and evangelical Christian schools have made contact with the FAS and have put proposals forward, only four of these have got to the official consultation stage and all others have withdrawn, at least temporarily.

National curriculum Clearly, funding is a major issue. But it is not the only one. These new grant-maintained schools have to follow the national curriculum in the same way as other schools. This includes a study of English literature and history, as well as science and technology and art and music. These (and other) subject areas are all compulsory, and schools are required to offer equal opportunities for all boys and girls. Further, if undersubscribed, the schools have to accept applicants who might not be of the same faith as that of the sponsors. Some of these criteria are too strict for some of the potential applicants, for they believe that to follow this curriculum would be to follow what is essentially a secular curriculum. In a questionnaire and interview survey of schools associated with the Christian Schools Campaign (Poyntz and Walford 1994), one headteacher wrote that My standpoint [is] one who would not tolerate government interference on the issue of education. I believe most Christian schools are set up to be independent and thus able to follow what they believe is the best route to follow. Any compromise on this idealism (i.e. teaching evolution as fact, deviant sex education, acceptance of other faiths as alternatives, etc.) would soon weaken their stand and nullify their reason for existence. Any move by government to

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enforce the national curriculum would have to be resisted, preferably in a united manner, and (though I have no love of law courts and their expense) through the law courts. Any acceptance of government funds is an immediate weakening of the independent status of schools, and is not acceptable in any circumstances. Information from other schools showed similar potential clashes. In an interview with another head, it was explained: We believe in a Christ-centred curriculum. That there should not be a split — a divide - between the home and family and the school — that their education should be an extension of what they learn at home. We obviously have Christ and the Bible at the centre, and we want them to have the same at school. So that they don't learn one thing at home and a sort of anti-thing at school. I believe there is good biblical backing for that, as the Jewish education was based on the home and Jewish Scripture, and Christian education should be the same . . . I think the divide between Christian education and state education has become far, far greater over recent years — humanism is taught and not only in the curriculum, but in terms of what children learn in the playground, it is far from what we would want. Other informants wrote or spoke about their desire not to teach particular aspects of the national curriculum such as evolution and sex education. While some were prepared to teach about other religious beliefs, many would only do so in the context of teaching that the other religious faiths were wrong or misguided. Some did not believe that equal opportunities should be offered to both girls and boys, for they were seen to have particular destinies in the home or in full-time work. In the context of Durkheim's beliefs on the subject, it is interesting that several of these schools were not prepared to become sponsored grant-maintained schools if this meant that they would not be allowed to use corporal punishment. Some of the teachers in these schools were also unqualified as teachers, which Durkheim would have prohibited, but they would have had to become certified teachers if grant-maintained status had been conferred. The official criteria set for a school to become grant-maintained automatically cut out many schools such as those above. No doubt Durkheim would have been happy that this was the case, for there are doubts about the degree to which they would teach 'respect for reason, for science, and for ideas and sentiments which are at the base of democratic morality'. It is worth noting, however, that Durkheim's criteria apply to all schools within the particular society, and not just those funded by the state. These


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evangelical Christian schools still exist as private schools - they would probably not still exist if Durkheim's instructions were followed. These schools were extreme examples. Many more would be prepared to become state-maintained and follow the national curriculum. But is this curriculum similar to Durkheim's view of the 'ideas and sentiments' that are commonly held within society? Can Durkheim's desire be seen to be embodied within the national curriculum? Sadly not. But he would probably have been in favour of some aspects of the original 1988 intentions. It is well known that the British national curriculum has been heavily revised several times since 1988. As it developed, some of the elements that might have provided an education in the common 'ideas and sentiments' have been squeezed out. In particular, the five 'cross-curricular' themes (environmental education, health education, citizenship, economic and industrial understanding, and careers education and guidance) which were originally intended to overlay the collection of separate subjects, never had a chance of being anything other than marginal. The heavy demands made on teachers by the statutory requirements of the ten subjects meant that there was little chance of encouraging the nonstatutory, and non-examinable cross-curricular themes, even where teachers were supportive. Of the five, the theme that has had the least impact is the one closest to the Durkheim's desires: citizenship education (Beck 1996; Saunders et al. 1995). The reasons for this neglect are numerous, but lack of clear guidance and the contested nature of the concept of citizenship have been major impediments. However, a greater emphasis on citizenship education would not, in itself, provide the type of national curriculum that Britain now requires. In various debates over the detailed content and nature of the curriculum (in particular, over English and history) a monocultural interpretation has largely superseded the multicultural curriculum that was developing in the 1970s and early 1980s. A narrow conception of British culture is now prescribed into which minority ethnic, religious and cultural groups are expected to assimilate. Clearly this version of common 'ideas and sentiments' is unlikely to foster social solidarity and national cohesion within a modern multicultural society such as Britain. The curriculum required is one that is inclusive and which recognizes and values the diversity of the present while rejecting postmodernist fragmentation.

Last thoughts It has been shown that the number of schools to have made the transition to grant-maintained status is so far very small. The explicit criteria

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are one set of factors that have restricted the demand from existing private schools. At this stage it can only be speculation, but it is likely that covert criteria have also developed through the routinization of procedures within the FAS and DfEE. Whilst Durkheim's definition of the state is not one that would now be readily accepted, it does have the advantage of focusing attention on the micro-aspects of the state. If the state refers to an administrative staff or officialdom which is formally entrusted with the function of government, then an examination of the everyday procedures that FAS and DfEE officials engage in will give direct information on the functioning of the state. How do these officials interact with potential sponsors from existing Muslim schools or from schools supporting Transcendental Meditation? Do their everyday processes covertly inform and ultimately exclude groups that may not promote the 'ideas and sentiments' that are 'commonly held' within society? Is their definition of what is 'commonly held' within English and Welsh society inclusive or exclusive? The research has still to be done. What is clear, however, is that, as Green (1997) has argued, the major dilemmas for governments and educationalists in the coming decade will focus on how to reconstruct cultures of citizenship and nationhood. This must be done in ways that are appropriate to modern conditions and yet conducive to a deepening of democracy and to a strengthening of social solidarity. One final implication from Durkheim. His idea for occupational associations is no longer a practical possibility — if indeed it ever was - but his reasoning for the need for such intermediate bodies is still relevant. They were designed to check the emergence of an autocratic state separate from the people while ensuring that the state is not absorbed by society. They were to be an intermediate level of democratic control and a pathway for communication between the people and the state. While in his time Durkheim saw regional organizations as decreasing in their importance, in fact they have been long-lasting. Whilst occupational associations were Durkheim's first preference, there can be little doubt that he would have strongly supported the maintenance of local authorities and LEAs rather than have an autonomous, autocratic state!

Very last thoughts In January 1988, the new Labour government announced state support for two Muslim primary schools that wished to become grant-maintained. This marks a substantial change, but it is interesting to note that the short press notice that was issued emphasized five crucial criteria that proposers


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have to meet before funding can be obtained. These were (1) provide a good standard of education; (2) deliver the national curriculum; (3) appoint suitably qualified staff; (4) offer equal opportunities to boys and girls; and (5) provide suitable buildings for the school. The list shows a balance between the need for diversity and the requirements of the state that Durkheim probably would have strongly supported. These schools will be Muslim schools, but ones far more tightly controlled and directed towards the needs of the state than the existing range of private Muslim schools to which an increasing number of Muslim parents send their children.

CHAPTER 4

Does the market ensure quality?

Market ideas in state-maintained schooling In her autobiography, writing about the 1988 Education Reform Act, the former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher (1993: 591) states: We introduced open enrolment — that is allowing popular schools to expand to their physical capacity (broadly judged by the number of children accommodated in 1979). This significantly widened choice further and prevented local authorities setting arbitrary limits on good schools just to keep unsuccessful schools full. An essential element in the same reforms was per capita funding, which meant that state money followed the child to whatever school he attended. Parents could vote with their children's feet and schools actually gained resources when they gained pupils. The worse schools in these circumstances would either have to improve or close. In effect we had gone as far as we could towards a 'public sector voucher'. There are a number of unquestioned assumptions here: that popular schools are automatically good schools, while less popular ones are bad; that 'good' schools desire expansion; that extra students will not change some of what is 'good' about the nature of those schools; and that it is possible for unpopular schools to make changes that can rescue them from a potential spiral of decline. The 1988 Act (HMSO 1998) represented a loss of confidence in the LEAs' abilities to raise standards and ensure quality. Instead, individual schools, whether they were given greater independence through grantmaintained status or still remained within the LEA sector, received their own delegated funds and became self-managed. The belief was that indi* First published in Westminster Studies in Education 24.1 (2001): 23-33.


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vidual schools were better able to make decisions about their own priorities and activities than were bureaucratic local councils. Moreover, the increased power given to parents about the particular school they wished their children to attend, by being able to express a preference for any school, was designed to ratchet up quality through head-on competition between schools for students. The concept of quality on which this is predicated is the very simple one where quality is something intrinsic to what is being discussed. Quality schooling implies high quality on some absolute scale. In this context a school's performance within the structure of the national curriculum must be seen as the key variable on which the government wished parents to make their choices. The national curriculum was designed to standardize what should be taught in schools, and the associated assessment of children within each school was designed to provide information to existing and prospective parents on the quality of each provider. This, then, suggested that schooling was much like any other consumer product. There were a variety of possible suppliers of this service and parents could choose between providers on the basis of information they supplied. Following the 1988 Act (HMSO 1988), successive legislation tried to ensure that more information was available about schools such that families could make a more informed choice. The 1992 Education (Schools) Act, for example, gave new powers to the Secretary of State to require all schools (including private schools) to provide more information. The aim was to assist parents in choosing schools for their children and, as is made explicit within the Act itself, to 'increase public awareness of the quality of the education provided by the schools concerned and of the educational standards achieved in those schools' (HMSO 1992: 11). Here, consumer choice within a market was expected to drive up quality. Quality was seen as measurable or at least as identified by performance on certain predetermined indicators such as examination results and staying-on rates. The government was acting to improve the information available on the range of possible providers in a similar way to enforcing the publication of the list of ingredients on food packaging. The implication was that once parents had sufficient information they would act together to drive the poor producers out of the market. This last aspect - driving poor-quality providers out of the market — is central to any understanding of how markets might relate to quality, yet it is feasible only in very restricted circumstances. One feature of the 1988 Act that is rarely discussed is that it coincided with a period of dramatic decline in the school-age population. Between 1982 and 1989 the number of children in all schools in the UK fell from 9.93 million to 9.01

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million — a fall of over 9 per cent (DfE 1993). This led to some schools being closed, but not nearly in line with the decline in pupil numbers. The overall student—teacher ratio improved from 17.8 to 16.9 in the same period, mainly because the decline in the number of schools and teachers did not keep pace with the decline in student numbers. Although many welcomed this improvement in student—teacher ratios, it was not necessarily the result of a deliberate policy. The truth is that schools are very difficult for LEAs to close. In almost every case parents tend to object to the proposed closure of their local school. The closure process becomes politically sensitive and can extend over very many years. Additionally, the LEA had a responsibility to think about future needs of the area when there might well be an expansion in student numbers which could not be accommodated if some existing schools were closed. It can thus be seen that the 1988 Education Reform Act was, in part, designed to deal with this specific problem of falling school rolls and the perceived need to 'rationalize provision' — that is, to close schools. At a time of oversupply of school places, it was seen as desirable to encourage parents to make choices about the schools they wished to use, and for the summation of these choices to lead to the closure of certain less popular schools. Parents' choices helped to make decisions about which school should be closed - the assumption being that these would be the 'bad' schools, and that other schools would increase their quality to ensure their survival within this market. However, once sufficient schools had been closed such that the number of places available roughly matched the number of students, this direct pressure of competition (even if all the assumptions were correct) would be insufficient to ensure that quality was continually improved. Once the number of places roughly meets the number of students there is no direct threat of closure. If quality is to be maintained and enhanced through market competition there needs to be an oversupply of places and the ability of new suppliers to enter the market. In fact, of course, the Conservative government itself quickly lost its faith in the market as the sole way of ensuring quality. While the ideology of the market was still evident in government rhetoric, the same 1992 legislation that gave greater powers to the Secretary of State to demand further information from schools also established the Office for Standards in Education and ushered in a new era of school inspection. Teams of registered inspectors conducting regular four-yearly inspections of all schools were now seen as the way to ensure quality. To report on 'the quality of the education provided by the school' is the first of the four general reporting duties of any registered inspector (HMSO 1992: 6). This is followed by the duty to report on standards, on finance and


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on the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils. Here quality is to be maintained by quality control through inspection. The 1992 Education Act's confusing, if not contradictory, messages about the means to improve quality are also to be found in the 1993 Act. In the 1993 Education Act (HMSO 1993) the market was potentially strengthened through the publication of even more information on schools but, most importantly, through the inclusion of legislation that encouraged new providers to enter the state-maintained school market. From 1994, it became possible for existing private schools to become fully funded by the state through sponsored grant-maintained status, or for potential sponsors to establish entirely new grant-maintained schools (Walford 1998; 2000b). With its Anglican, Roman Catholic, Jewish and other schools, Britain has always had a diversity of providers of schools even within the state-maintained sector, but always within the tight planning framework of the LEAs. This 1993 legislation was designed to encourage an even wider range of potential suppliers and, being grantmaintained, these schools were outside the LEAs' responsibilities. Existing or new educational trusts were encouraged to transfer existing private schools to the state-maintained sector or build new schools, and had to provide at least 15 per cent of the capital costs. However, in practice, only fifteen schools took advantage of this legislation (Walford 2000b), for it was interpreted in ways that made entry into the market very costly in time and finance. It became more like a franchise operation, where potential franchisees had to pay very large sums to be able to use the brand name of 'sponsored grant-maintained' school. While the Act only required 15 per cent of the capital costs, the majority were forced to donate far more than this in order to be accepted. Rather than encourage competition, they were allowed to be established only where there was perceived to be an existing undersupply of places. However, as the group includes two Muslim primary schools and a Seventh-Day Adventist secondary school, there has been a significant opening of the market to new suppliers. Following the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act (HMSO 1998), these schools have been renamed and had their relationship with their LEAs partially restructured to become foundation schools or voluntary-aided schools and that Act provides ways by which similar new foundation or voluntary-aided schools may be established by a diversity of sponsors. But while the number of providers, and the nature of provision, was expanded, at the same time, this 1993 Education Act showed that the government had increasing doubts about the ability of the market alone, through parents' choices, to ensure the quality of schooling. While the 1992 Act had made provision for action plans to follow Ofsted

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inspection reports, and for the monitoring of the implementation of those action plans for failing schools, it was left to the 1993 Act to give specific powers to LEAs to introduce special measures to deal with failing schools. This Act also gave powers to the Secretary of State to establish small independent groups of education managers, called 'education associations', where it was felt that the LEA was unable or unwilling to deal satisfactorily with a failing school. Quality control through inspection was strengthened by powers of intervention. Subsequent legislation by both Conservative and Labour governments has given even greater powers to the Secretary of State to intervene if, as a result of inspection, a school is perceived to be failing. The fact that Ofsted inspection was established so quickly after the introduction of market mechanisms into state-maintained schooling means that it is almost impossible to make judgements about the independent effects of these conflicting strategies for maintaining and improving quality. However, as will be discussed below, there have now been very many research studies that have tried to examine the effects of both strategies — usually focusing on one strategy without considering the other. One focus of research has been on the reasons for choosing a particular school, and the effects of this on the schools. One way of conceptualizing these aspects is through 'process' and 'product' criteria (Elliott 1982). 'Process' criteria involve factors indicative of the capacity for human relationships such as the happiness of the child, while 'product' criteria refer to outcome such as examination results. Early studies showed that parents were more concerned with 'process' than 'product' criteria. For example, early studies carried out by Alston (1985), Boulton and Coldron (1989), Woods (1992) and Webster et al. (1993) have all shown that 'parents are just as, if not more concerned with "process" issues than measured outcomes when choosing schools' (Webster et al. 1993: 18). Other studies reporting similar findings include those by Hunter (1991) and West (1992a; 1992b). However, more recent work by David et al. (1994) and Carroll and Walford (1997a and b), for example, has suggested an increase in the emphasis given to examination results by parents at both the primary and secondary levels, but the ways in which examination results of particular schools are taken into consideration by families may be complex. These research studies have shown that while they are rarely the only or even the first criterion, examination results seem to act as a screening mechanism — deselecting particular schools from consideration. For many parents, schools have to show that their examination results are above an acceptable minimum before they become potentially acceptable.


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The latest large-scale study of choice conducted by Woods, Bagley and Glatter (1998) takes this one stage further. Their research uses a casestudy approach and focuses on three contrasting groups of secondary schools selected such that they can be seen as representing three separate local competitive markets. Their findings about the relative importance of 'academic-centred factors' and 'child-centred factors' in choice are complex. They find differences between the three groups of schools studied. Overall, they do not find that academic concerns are generally of greater importance to parents, but that they are roughly equal. However, even though this is true, they find that the schools themselves have reacted as if parents have academic factors as their major criterion. They find that 'there is a sharpening of the focus on the academic in most schools and that, further than this, there is a privileging of the academic' (Woods et al. 1998: 162). They found that, when school managers talk about the attractiveness of their school, they talk of academic progress and examination performance. These are 'the major and widely accepted currency of "good schooling" in the climate of enhanced emphasis on choice' (p. 163). Now, of course, there is nothing wrong with schools attempting to improve the academic performance of young people! What is at issue here is that this seems to be becoming almost the one and only way in which schools judge themselves and expect others to judge them. Not only does this suggest a corresponding decrease in the emphasis given to social, cultural and aesthetic activities, it also implies that schools can be ranked within a single hierarchy. Thus, rather than leading to greater diversity of schooling, within the English context, greater choice appears to be leading to greater uniformity and conformity. Schools have attempted to become more like each other, in the sense that they are either 'better' or 'worse' than competitor schools on this single criterion. Once schools are seen as being placed within a single hierarchy, they become less or more popular. The popular schools are able to attract and select those young people who will enhance their examination successes, and the differences between schools are likely to widen. As has been indicated above, the evidence that we have on the effects of markets is that there has been a narrowing of the criteria by which parents, and particularly schools, judge quality. There is a similar very large number of studies that have examined the alternative way of trying to maintain quality — Ofsted inspections. These are almost unanimously critical of the process and the results of this form of summative quality control. To take some examples from a recent collection of articles (Cullingford 1999), Winkley (1999) argues that Ofsted inspections damage school and teacher morale, discourage risk and

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innovation and are expensive in time and money. More importantly, except in the minority of cases where poor schools have been closed or revamped following a critical inspection, there is little evidence that Ofsted has made any difference to raising quality. Indeed Cullingford and Daniels (1999) found that the inspection process had a negative effect on the percentage of pupils gaining A*—C grades in GCSEs. Law and Glover (1999) argue that there is a real danger that the existing Ofsted methodology may actually undermine rather than enhance the prospects for school improvement over time. In summary, if there are problems with the market as a means of maintaining and increasing quality, there are certainly problems with current forms of inspection as well.

A real market But critics would argue that the present state-maintained system does not provide a test of the market at all. It is not a free market. At best, it is only a limited market or quasi-market. They would argue that only a completely free market can be expected to work to maintain and improve quality. Of course, various advocates differ on exactly what they mean by a free market. Most would retain at least some form of state regulation and funding for the poor to deal with equity and other issues. James Tooley s (2000) ideas are important because they push the idea of a free market in education to its logical conclusion. He advocates that the state should have no involvement whatsoever in the provision, funding and regulation of schooling or educational provision in whatever form it might become available in the future. The clarity of Tooley's rejection of the role of the state in education is stunning. He gives clear support to a market that is unfettered by any government regulation and which receives no state support for the education of disadvantaged children. Tooley argues that a true market in education can only be achieved if there is no state provision, no state funding, relatively minimal regulation, relatively easy entry for new suppliers and a price mechanism in operation. Only when all of these features are present would it be a true market in education and then, he believes, quality would be maintained and enhanced. Tooley takes his inspiration from studies of English schooling before the introduction of compulsory education in 1880 and his own experience of examining present-day private schooling in a number of developing countries (Tooley 1999). Following the work of West (1994), he suggests that school attendance and literacy rates were high before the


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introduction of state education and that there was actually no necessity for the state to become involved in provision. Likewise, he uses his examples of the expansion of private schooling in countries such as Brazil, India, Peru, South Africa and Romania to argue that high-quality provision can be generated in such situations. He argues that, within such a free market, the three virtues of Family, Freedom and Philanthropy would be sufficient to ensure that all benefit from high-quality education. Tooley argues that a true market in education would work in exactly the same way as a market in any other commodity. A true market would mean the development of 'brand-name' providers of schooling which would compete with each other to produce a high-quality product. Such chains of schools would be seeking to expand their share of the market, would be heavily involved in quality control to maintain their standards and would be continually seeking to ensure that quality is available at reasonable costs. They would thus be committed to research and development. They also, he argues, would find it desirable to deal with potential inequities by providing loans for the poor or through cross-subsidy. The idea of brand-name producers is central to Tooley s vision, for he further believes that it deals with the problem of information — either too much of it or too little. He argues that the market will ensure quality through chains of schools and, indeed, he describes several such chains of private schools in the developing countries he has visited. When we shop at a supermarket for our groceries or check in to a hotel, we often do not check all the comparable products, he argues, but simply choose a brand-name product. We know it will be of quality, because of the competition that exists between suppliers. Yet Tooley s whole argument is weak. A 'brand name' does not guarantee high quality at all in an absolute sense. The version of quality implicit here is a relative one of 'fitness for purpose'. Quality is to be judged by the extent to which the service meets the specification that has been set for it. It is fitness for purpose for a particular price. A tourist might much prefer to stay at the Ritz Carlton in every city visited. He or she would be reasonably sure that these hotels would provide high-quality accommodation and taxi-drivers would have no difficulty in finding them. However, most tourists cannot afford to stay there. That particular brand name is irrelevant to their lives. What most people have to do is to seek a rather less prestigious brand name that gives a poorer service, but one that can be afforded. In the supermarket people are again faced with similar choices. They may desire the de-luxe coffee but buy the store's own-brand economy coffee. They know the quality is not as high, but it is what can be afforded given their preferences and other outgoings. Brand names are not, in themselves, any guarantee of high quality,

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but simply consistent quality. Indeed, manufacturers often produce (under differing brand names) various types of the same product priced according to quality and the purchasers budget. However, it is important to recognize that choosing a school for a child is not like using a hotel or a supermarket. It does not matter greatly if the room turns out to be smaller than the tourist had hoped or has no coffee-making facilities. It is just one night's slight inconvenience. The tourist knows not to go back to that hotel or that chain again. Similarly, people can choose another supermarket or another manufacturer if they are not happy with the quality of their jar of coffee. Schools and education are not like that. First, the quality is not immediately evident — it takes an investment of time before any judgement can be made. Second, it is difficult and costly to change supplier - and this will still be true if educational opportunities are provided on a more ad hoc, smaller-scale, contract basis. There is a need for some closer analogies. In many ways, choosing a school is more like buying a house than using a hotel or supermarket. It is very difficult to try out the house before buying, and once bought it is very costly and burdensome to move. Further, the choice of house very rarely depends on the brand name of the builder. Indeed, with second-hand houses, we may not even know the name of the builder or the company may have gone bankrupt. The choice of house is based on very many other aspects than who built it. Perhaps the choice of school might be also seen as being similar to purchasing a holiday. It is possible to go to a travel agent and pick a 'brand-name' tour company. Such a tour company can ensure that the hotels and food will be of an appropriate quality for what we are able and prepared to pay, and that flights and transfers will be smooth. But it cannot guarantee very much of what might make the holiday an enjoyable experience. It cannot guarantee the weather, the amiability of the other guests in the hotel, or the zest for enjoyment that holiday-makers must bring with them for the holiday to be a success. Brand names can only offer a defined minimum level of provision, and that level is dependent upon preparedness to pay. But the effectiveness of schooling does not only depend on the quality of provision that a brand name might possibly ensure, it depends upon the zest and enthusiasm that the student brings to the school. It depends on the characteristics of the student which are individual but structured by the inequalities of power, wealth, privilege and opportunity within society. But perhaps the most important way in which education differs from simple consumer products or services is that it is not just the primary customer who benefits. The strangest aspect of the idea that the market can


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ensure quality is that it implies that there is only one customer, or type of customer, in any transaction. Usually the customer is thought of as 'the parents' who choose on behalf of the child. But, of course, if this market analogy is to be used, there are actually very many customers for schools, and these customers are very likely to have contradictory consumer preferences. It is certainly not clear that preferences of children and parents are always congruent. But, more crucially, if potential customers include (at the local level) grandparents, other relatives, neighbours and friends, and (at the macrolevel) employers, the state and society in general, there is very great opportunity for conflicting preferences. Schooling is unlike a consumer product because there are multiple stakeholders — multiple customers — who make multiple demands on schooling and also benefit from particular forms of schooling. Schooling, and more importantly education, is not an individual benefit where quality can be judged solely in terms of the individual preferences of the person who is educated. Education is essentially a social and a moral affair. It is an activity in which the society within which an individual lives is essentially involved.

If not the free market then what? For the market in schooling to be a real market it is suggested that the state should not be involved in its provision, funding or regulation. In contrast, I suggest that the state should be centrally involved in schooling. Indeed, the development of the Ofsted system of regular inspection might be seen as one way in which the state has acted to ensure that its demands as a customer of schools are being met. Yet, while I see a central role for the state in education, I am not suggesting that it should necessarily take its current form. In particular, the present attempts at quality control through Ofsted need to be greatly modified, within a reconsideration of what purposes schooling should be designed to serve. It is necessary to examine provision, funding and regulation in turn. First, provision. In Britain provision of schooling has never been solely a state affair. Within the private sector there are a range of providers. Most institutions that serve school-age students are now non-profitmaking, but there are very many profitmaking colleges and other organizations that operate in further education and training. Moreover, there are actually chains of schools like the Girls' Schools Trust which is currently considering expansion by buying any grammar schools where a

ballot demands a change to comprehensive schooling. Additionally, the

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Roman Catholic Church and the Church or England still play a major role in the provision of schools within the state-maintained sector, and recent developments derived from the 1993 Education Act (HMSO 1993) have begun to open up the possibility of other groups also sponsoring schools. Indeed, the distinction between the private sector and the state-maintained sector is actually difficult to draw, especially at an international level. In The Netherlands, for example, some 70 per cent of children are in private schools and there are Roman Catholic, Protestant Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Jewish providers (Walford 1995b). There are also several secular schools which promote particular educational philosophies such as Montessori, Dalton, Jenaplan and Freinet schools. Significantly, while these are called private schools, since 1917 state and private schools have been financed by the state on an equal basis. It is open for any group of parents or others to apply to the Ministry of Education and Science to establish new schools and, if the relevant criteria are met and quality maintained, these new schools become state-funded. There is some arbitrariness about calling these private schools when our similar schools are called state-maintained and vice versa. Britain has already accepted that there should be a diversity of providers of schools, and recent decisions under the 1993 Education Act have led to Muslim, Seventh-Day Adventist and Sikh schools entering the maintained sector as foundation or voluntary-aided schools. In market terms, the state is acting as a customer for various potential providers. Although there is the worrying potential for greater ethnic segregation, it is hard to deny new sponsors the right to enter as suppliers. Indeed, there are several advantages in including such schools within the statemaintained sector as they are then forced to meet a range of relevant criteria which the state, as a customer, sets. The second area of state involvement is funding. I believe that funding should be available because providing education for children is a societal responsibility and not an individual one. If children are not educated it is not just they who surfer but also the society in which they live. This is not altruism — it is a simple necessity if we are to have a civilized society. Put crudely, I want other people's children to share, to wait their turn, to act nicely towards each other. I want them to recognize that they are part of a society and that they have responsibilities as well as rights. I want them to recognize that being part of a group is often better and more fun that being alone. I want young people to be good citizens. I want them to have access to good sex education, to drugs education, to be influenced by ideas of anti-sexism, anti-racism and anti-homophobia. I would much prefer to pay for other people's children than risk the out-


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comes of relying on parents choosing within a totally free market of nonregulated suppliers. Regulation is the final area of the state's involvement in education. One aspect that is worthy of note in Tooley's description of buying products from supermarkets is that he forgets the degree of state regulation that is necessary for him to be able to make safe purchases. At the extreme, it may well be true that the competitive market ensures that food that actually makes the buyer ill is not sold - a shop that continually sold eggs with salmonella would be unlikely to last for long. However, while competition will encourage shops to eliminate all products that are obviously harmful, it is not always easy to assess potential harm, or where harm has come from. Sometimes the difference between products is not that they do harm but that they have less nutritious but cheaper ingredients. In fact, shops and the products sold within them are actually highly state-regulated. Health and Safety regulations are central to our faith that food products are safe to eat, while the listing of contents on packages allows us to check for additives or undesirable contents. A huge part of the legal structure centres on contracts that are made between buyer and purchaser and the right and duties of both in any transaction. The market for food exists within a network of state regulation that is designed to support that type of market. There is a need for regulation of education too. But, the key question relates to the nature of that regulation — and here our concern is "with regulation as ita relates to quality.

So what is quality? The foregoing discussion has shown that the market cannot ensure quality. But the analogy of the market is useful in that it shows that there is a basic need to rethink what is meant by 'quality'. To do so, it must be recognized that the ideology of the market as it is usually conceived acts partially to conceal the essentially political nature of schooling. Within the ideology of the individualistic market, where all stand equal before a range of choices, schools are transformed into market commodities along with the children who, at one point, are customers and, at another, the product. Children are seen as exploitable and replaceable future workers and also as current consumers who themselves can be bought and sold to the highest bidder (Apple 1999). The evidence that we have about the traditionally conceived market is that it acts to give increased advantage to those who are already advantaged (Walford 1994a). It enables pre-existing patterns of inequality to be maintained.

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If there is any merit in the idea of a market in schooling, it is that it serves to underline that schools serve multiple purposes and multiple customers. Most importantly, it can remind us that one of the most important customers for schooling is the society as a whole as well as parents and children. This leads to a recognition that a revised conception of quality must refocus on the social aspects of schooling. If the social and collective aspects of schooling are to be given greater prominence, then some form of inspection will need to be retained to assure quality. But such inspection should not be based on a collection of jobbing inspectors' competing for a series of individual contracts in order to generate an income for themselves. Inspection is a necessary part of accountability within any democracy, but it needs to be in a form where the schools are fully involved in the inspection process, where trust is built between the inspectors or advisers and where active support is offered to each school to help it deal with weaknesses and foster innovation. There is a need to move from a form of inspection that is based on quality control to one based on democratic quality assurance where the culture of the institutions is one where high expectations are paramount. The aim should be to develop a self-evaluative culture within schools where open criticism and innovation are valued and change not seen as a threat. This cannot be done in a situation of competition and insecurity. Further, we need a conception of quality that is broader than that implicit within the conventional market model. It is important that a far wider range of criteria is developed on which schools are judged. While quality in schooling must include an emphasis on academic and other forms of individual self-development, and on employability, it must also include the many other ways in which schools can encourage children to take part in society as active and compassionate citizens. In particular, quality in schooling must be concerned with equity. A quality educational system is one that is fair, one that deals with racism, sexism and classism. Schools should be involved in challenging the idea that social stratification is natural. Rather than fostering and justifying inequality, they should challenge it and act to reduce it. To quote the words of John Dewey (1895) more than a century ago: 'I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.'

PART 2

Comprehensive Schools and Selection


CHAPTER 5

A return to selection?*

Introduction Under a headline of'Back to the 11-Plus' The Times editorial of 27 April 1992 stated: A secondary education is either 'comprehensive' or it is divided into different types of school. If it is divided, admission to the more desirable schools means pupils being selected by those schools . . . To pretend that the selected opted-out structure emerging as government policy has anything to do with parental choice is a deception. It is a return to the system prior to 1965. The Times editorial writer could see through the rhetoric months before the 1992 White Paper (DfE 1992) had been finalized, but when it was published the White Paper was still couched in terms of specialization, choice and diversity. The reality is a vision of the future where some schools will be encouraged to offer high-quality educational experiences, while others will not. They will 'specialize' in selected curriculum areas and give differentiated educational experiences deemed appropriate for particular pupils. Popular schools will be able to select children on a broad range of criteria, which may include the Key Stage 2 standard assessment tasks, but will also undoubtedly include parental knowledge and interest in schooling and the child's motivation, wider interests and determination to stay in full-time education after 16. It is also likely indirectly to include social class, gender and ethnicity.

* First published in Westminster Studies in Education 17 (1994): 19-30.

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A historical background to selection While most British children now attend comprehensive schools, selection for unequal provision has been the dominant principle throughout the development of the educational system. Historically, social class and gender have been the major determinates of the quality of schooling a child received. Before the nineteenth century a wide variety of grammar and other fee-paying schools were available for those with sufficient means, while the poor mostly received some meagre schooling in charity schools or dame schools. The first state funding of schooling occurred in 1833, but it was not until 1870 that the government saw the need to build and finance its own elementary schools. These schools provided a type of education deemed suitable for the children of the poor. After 1902 public funding was provided for the establishment of new state grammar schools to supplement the endowed grammar schools. These fee-paying schools recruited children at 7 or 8 and kept them until 15 or older. They provided a parallel, rather than sequential, system of education to the elementary schools. In 1907 a Liberal government established a link between the two systems by making grants to the grammar schools conditional on 25 per cent of places becoming free places for children from the elementary schools. The two systems for different classes were still divided, but some ladders were put in place to give some academically able children from the working class the chance of social mobility. While there were some scholarship places before 1907, it was this move that led to the 'scholarship examination' and later the eleven plus. In England and Wales, free secondary schooling as a separate stage was introduced following the 1944 Education Act. The idea of developing different types of school to suit the differing abilities or aptitudes of various children had grown during the interwar years. The Hadow Committee in 1926 proposed five different types of school following a break at 11, and streaming of children within these schools. The Spens Report (1938) recommended that three different types of school be provided after 11 with parity of provision between them. The Norwood Report (1943) enshrined the idea of three groupings of children with different 'types of mind'who were to be educated according to their abilities to profit from either a grammar, technical or 'modern' type of curriculum. It is worth recognizing that the proposed use of aptitudes as a basis for selection led Cyril Burt (arch-advocate of early selection according to what he perceived were innate differences in intelligence) to argue that the psychological theory on which the Norwood Report was based was as outmoded as phrenology (Rubinstein and Simon 1973: 30).

COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS AND SELECTION

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The secondary school system instituted after the Second World War varied according to LEA. The Act itself did not establish three types of school, but most authorities followed a tripartite or bipartite plan. It was usual for all children to take the 'eleven-plus examination' in their own primary schools, and for headteachers' reports to be taken into consideration. The proportion of children selected for grammar school depended on the number of places available in each LEA. In the 1950s it ranged from 9 per cent in Gateshead to 60 per cent in Merioneth. Nationally, the proportion of children in technical schools never rose above 7 per cent. Not all children offered places in grammar and technical schools took them up, as there were additional uniform and extras costs to be borne and some parents and children believed that the secondary moderns would better serve their needs. The 1944 Act incorporated the majority of the denominational schools into the state-maintained sector, but a significant private sector was retained where the main selection criterion was the ability and willingness to pay substantial fees. In 1951 9 per cent of children aged 11-15 were in private schools with a further 2.4 per cent in direct grant schools (Halsey et al. 1984). Currently, in England, nearly 9 per cent of secondary pupils attend private schools. The majority of these pupils are selected by the schools on the basis of the ability and willingness of their parents or guardians to pay substantial fees, but a significant minority receive some support from government or from the schools themselves.

Why did the comprehensive system develop? In 1951 less than 1 per cent of secondary-age children in the maintained sector were in comprehensive schools. By 1961 the figure had risen to about 5 per cent; in 1971 it was 35 percent; and in 1981 it was 90 per cent. As with most major social changes, this movement towards comprehensive education was the result of pressures from an uneasy alliance of groups and individuals with a range of ideologies, interests and visions for the future (Ball 1984; Benn and Simon 1972). They responded to a diversity of evidence about the workings of the tripartite system. During the 1950s, for example, it became clear that there was a considerable social class bias between the intakes to the three types of school in the tripartite system (Floud et al. 1956; Douglas 1964). As IQ tests were generally used to select children, arguments centred on the fairness of these tests for children from different backgrounds, the extent to which they were able to discriminate between children according to their abilities or their academic potential, and on the examinations having to be taken at

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an age when children were still developing at different rates (Yates and Pidgeon 1957). It was also shown that children could be coached into obtaining high scores in these examinations, and that the reliability of the tests was low (Ford 1969). Even accepting a narrow definition of efficiency of selection, it was estimated that about 10 per cent of children were wrongly selected each year (Vernon 1957). A further important factor was an increased demand for a 'grammar school-type' education. This was partly due to rising expectations on the part of parents, but demographic trends also had their effect. The postwar 'bulge' entered secondary education at a time when only a few new grammar schools had been created. As the percentage of children being selected varied markedly between LEAs, in many areas middleclass parents were finding that their children were not being admitted to the grammar schools which they had attended. Instead, their children were being forced to attend secondary moderns, which they perceived were funded at a lower level, had fewer well-paid and well-qualified teachers and were only able to enter children for a limited range of public examinations. This individual concern about sons and daughters was largely transmuted to a call for greater educational equality of educational opportunity for all and greater national efficiency. It was believed that both of these would be provided through comprehensive education. In the 1960s a variety of sociological studies of grammar and secondary modern schools also began to raise questions about the desirability of selection at 11. The classic case-studies of Hargreaves (1967) and Lacey (1970) showed the detrimental effects of selection and differentiation between and within schools, while other studies highlighted the cultural conflict experienced by a working-class child in a grammar school (Dale and Griffith 1965; Jackson and Marsden 1962). In addition, a minority of advocates of comprehensive schools believed that putting all children in the same sort of school, where they would have equal physical facilities and equal access to high-quality teachers, would raise the aspirations of all children, bring about greater equality within the schools and lead to greater equality outside in the world of work. It was hoped that by mixing children from different social class backgrounds in the same school there would be a lowering of barriers between classes and a reduction in class antagonism and class differences.

Examination results from different systems One of the main claims put forward by advocates of a selective system is that grammar, technical and secondary modern schools are better able to


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meet the needs of a diverse range of children. They argue that comprehensive schools have led to a lowering of academic standards and a selective system is seen as a way of raising standards for all children by providing appropriate schooling to meet their different educational needs (Cox and Dyson 1970; Cox and Boyson 1975; 1977). Can this claim be tested? At first sight it would seem to be a relatively simple exercise to compare the academic results of children in LEAs which retain selective systems with those which only have comprehensive schools. In practice, any such comparisons are frustrated by innumerable difficulties, and all the studies that have been conducted have serious shortcomings. Three very different studies which attempted to compare examination performance of children were published in 1983. One compared the public examination results of LEAs with selective and comprehensive systems (Marks et al. 1983); the second examined the performances of members of a national sample of children born in one week in March 1958 (Steedman 1983); and the third analysed questionnaire responses from a Scottish national sample of school-leavers (Gray et al. 1983). Each drew upon data which had not been collected with this comparison in mind, which meant that each had significant omissions. While some of these problems are accepted by the various authors, and their findings have appropriate caveats, there ensued a considerable academic debate (Heath 1984) and vitriolic political controversy (Cox and Marks 1988; Steedman 1987). Of necessity, all three studies looked at examination performance in a diverse and changing national system, so none compared like with like. There were difficulties of definition of type of school, of limitations in the data available and in methods of taking account of social factors. In all cases the comprehensives were less well established than the selective schools, and the presence of the private sector further confounded any comparisons, as the introduction of comprehensive schools in particular areas encouraged a distinct group of parents to opt for the private sector (Fox 1985; Johnson 1987). The group using the maintained sector thus differed according to whether the LEA system was selective or not. The first study by Marks et al. (1983) claimed that 'substantially higher O-level, CSE and A-level examination results are to be expected in a fully selective system than in a fully comprehensive system'; the second found no clear overall advantage or disadvantage to selective or comprehensive schooling; and the third suggested that 'comprehensive education had a levelling effect on attainment, raising fewer pupils to the highest levels of attainment, but helping more of them to progress beyond the minimum. It appears to have raised average attainment' (Gray et al. 1983). In all three

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cases, once background factors had been taken into account, the overall differences were small. Some more recent studies have attempted to add to these three. One of the authors of the first report (Marks and Pomian-Srzednicki 1985) again used local education examination results from a slightly better sample and largely substantiated the earlier results. Some account was taken of the criticisms of the earlier study, but this second study still has major difficulties (Fogelman 1984; Clifford and Heath 1984). In particular, it still used data aggregated to the LEA level, as have some other similar studies using DES statistics (DES 1984; Gray et al. 1984; Gray 1990). Follow-up research to the Scottish study has also been published (McPherson and Willms 1987), and here the data sources and analysis are of a much higher quality. The authors show that once the comprehensives in Scotland had become established, they contributed to a rise in examination attainment and to a decrease in social class differences in attainment. By looking at national representative samples of pupils who left school in 1976, 1980 and 1984, the authors also demonstrate that the decreasing gap in attainment between middle-class and working-class children was due to a small but significant levellingup of working-class attainment and not a levelling-down of middleclass attainment. The need to take account of the time taken for schools to become established is also indicated in a study of a South Wales community by David Reynolds et al. (1987). The area partially reorganized secondary education in the mid-1970s such that a third of pupils remained in a selective system of grammar and secondary modern schools while the majority went to new comprehensives. This study found that highability children were catered for nearly as well in both systems but that these comprehensives were failing the middle- and lower-ability children academically and socially. The authors argued that the comprehensives were failing some pupils because they had not become established comprehensives and had not adjusted to their new clientele. They described a range of internal organizational aspects (poor management, lack of pupil involvement and inadequate pastoral care provision) which made these schools less effective. Compared with these factors, whether the system was selective or not was unimportant. Since the time of these studies there has been increasingly sophisticated research on how added value ought to be measured, but the number of selective school systems has declined to a level where further meaningful comparisons between systems are impossible. We are left with a group of studies, unsatisfactory in various ways, which give partially contradictory results.


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What can be salvaged from these studies? The most reasonable conclusion is that any differences between the overall examination effectiveness of the two systems are small but, once comprehensives have become established, they appear slightly to reduce social class differences in attainment. A return to selection on measured ability or aptitude at 11 would initiate a further long period of instability and would probably reduce overall attainment. More significantly, all of the studies found that there were far larger differences between the examination successes of different schools of the same type than between the average examination results of different systems, even after such factors as social class had been taken into account. The most important finding from these studies is that individual schools differ greatly in their effectiveness.

The practice of comprehensive education Stephen Ball (1988: 11) argued that it must now be clear that in practice the so-called comprehensive reform never really happened. What has happened to secondary education is a move from one set of divisions and inequalities to another. Indeed in some senses the real change in education has been to make those divisions and inequalities more complex and less visible. Selection did not disappear when comprehensives replaced the tripartite system, it simply became less overt — and probably more unfair because the criteria for selection became more confused. Even before the creation of new types of school in the late 1980s, the comprehensive system actually embraced diversity. During the 1960s and 1970s there was a conspiracy of silence over the possibility of differences between schools of the same type. While many parents believed that some comprehensive schools were better than others and acted to try to ensure that their children attended a 'good' one, at the official level the majority of teachers, administrators and local and central government officials tried to deny that there were any significant differences. But not all comprehensives were the same. First, some LEAs, such as Labour-controlled Birmingham, called the bulk of their schools comprehensive yet retained a highly selective grammar school system. Prospective pupils for these grammar schools had to be prepared for a special examination and to pay any daily transport costs if selected. Second, voluntary aided and controlled denominational schools offered

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a different type of school even where all schools were comprehensive. Bernadette O'Keefe (1986) has demonstrated that many parents saw these schools as closer to grammar schools than the county comprehensives. Selection procedures and criteria are many and varied and often depend upon parents being able to demonstrate a religious commitment. Within most comprehensive systems, children were allocated to schools on the basis of catchment areas. Knowledge of the assumed quality and character of local schooling, and where the catchment boundary lines were drawn, thus became prime requirements for any estate agent, and schools thus served relatively homogeneous social class intakes. Parents who were able and willing to pay simply moved within the catchment areas of their chosen 'good' schools and further inflated the prices of surrounding housing. The so-called comprehensive system thus allowed affluent and wellmotivated parents to ensure the quality of schooling for their children within the maintained sector. Within the former tripartite system there had always been the risk that their children would not be selected for grammar school and would either have to attend a 'second-class' secondary modern or be moved to the private sector. The 'comprehensive' system gave security. This explains why there has been so little pressure from parents at the local level to return to selective education once comprehensives have become established. National opinion polls have sometimes shown majorities in favour of more grammar schools (Cox and Marks 1988: 64), but when the possibility has occurred locally this support has evaporated. In Solihull, for example, it was affluent, middle-class parents in the south of the borough who campaigned to stop two of their schools becoming academically selective. They had paid dearly to ensure that their own children were destined for these highly valued schools and did not wish to forgo the return on their investment. Children from the affluent middle-class areas were well catered for. In addition to their strong parental support and stocks of cultural capital, the active parent—teacher associations ensured that any necessary extras were provided. These schools were successful and efficient and would ensure that there was a high chance of adequate certification to legitimate social class reproduction. There was certainly no social mixing with the Birmingham overspill children living in the north of the borough. (Walford and Jones 1986: 251)


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New forms of selection The first new form of selection to be introduced following the Conservative victory in 1979 was the Assisted Places Scheme, which was predicated on a belief that comprehensive schools were failing highability children. With no empirical evidence to support the view that private schools actually achieved better added value than comprehensive schools, a highly select group were 'rescued' from the state-maintained system and placed in private schools. Selection of children for Assisted Places is by the individual schools and uses their own criteria. The intake to the scheme has been shown to be highly non-representative in terms of social class backgrounds (Edwards et al. 1989), and its presence reduces the comprehensiveness of the local authority intake. The major criterion for selection to the grammar schools was academic ability, usually as measured by tests, but in the City Technology Colleges (CTCs) selection for unequal provision is deliberately not based on academic ability. CTCs are required to select children with a broad range of academic abilities from a defined catchment area. They are intended to act as 'beacons of excellence' for nearby LEA schools and thus raise educational standards overall. At the first CTC at Kingshurst, Solihull, parents are required to apply for admission on behalf of their child, and to pay any daily transport costs to the college if the child is accepted. The child takes a simple non-verbal reasoning test, which is used to ensure that selection is based on a range of abilities broadly representative of those who apply, and is also interviewed with a parent. Parents have to state that they support the school's aims, will help to ensure that homework is done and intend the child to continue in full-time education until the age of 18. Children have to be willing to work at a school with a longer school day and shorter holidays (Walford and Miller 1991; Walford 1991a; Gewirtz et al. 1991). The college went to some lengths to ensure that it was taking children with a wide ability range, but the whole entry procedure meant that selection is based instead on the degree of motivation of parents and children. Children and families where there is a low level of interest in education simply do not apply. Kingshurst CTC selects children from a defined catchment area which includes eight LEA secondary schools; thus it is in direct competition with these other schools for pupils. In interviews, heads and teachers in the nearby LEA schools claimed that the CTC was selecting those very parents who have the most interest in their children's education, and those children who are most keen and enthusiastic. They argued that the CTC was selecting children who, while they might not be particularly

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academically able, had special skills and interests in sport, art, drama or other activities. These children were seen as invigorating the atmosphere of any school, providing models for other children and being most rewarding for teachers. Heads and teachers in nearby schools thus saw their schools as having been impoverished by the CTC's selection of these well-motivated pupils. They saw the CTC as having only a negative effect on their schools. The 1988 Education Reform Act for England and Wales introduced further ideas designed to hasten market processes within education and develop new forms of selection (Walford 1990). One possibility that grant-maintained schools bring is that individual schools may be able to become grammar schools by asking for a change in their admissions policies after opting out. This was clearly part of the intention behind the Act, but so far no schools have been allowed to make this change. In contrast, two comprehensive schools in Milton Keynes have actually opted out to avoid the possibility of Conservative-controlled Buckinghamshire forcing them to become selective (Deem and Davies 1991). Selection can also be introduced more subtly. Both grant-maintained schools and open enrolment were designed to increase competition between schools and to encourage parents to make choices between schools. Funding to individual schools is now largely related directly to pupil numbers, and schools have their own delegated budgets. Popular schools gain extra funding as they attract more pupils, while less popular schools lose funding as their numbers decline. But choice is limited to the number of places available in each school. Once there are more applications for a particular school than places available, it is the schools that have choice rather than the parents or children. As Stuart Sexton, former adviser to Mark Carlisle and Sir Keith Joseph, candidly explains: Inevitably, the over-subscribed school has to choose which children to accept and which to reject. This is just as true for a comprehensive school as for any other school; if too many people want the available places, some will be selected up to the maximum capacity and the remainder will have to pursue their second or even third choice of school. Every over-subscribed school 'chooses' which children from that over-subscribed list. It is disingenuous for some commentators to pretend otherwise. (Sexton 1992: 14) The ability of parents and children to choose a school soon leads to schools being able to choose the pupils they want. Moreover, there are differences between the families who choose and those that do not, so that a mutual 'self-selection' process occurs even before schools are full. The evidence on choice and selection from Scotland (where 1981 leg-


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islation foreshadowed later changes in England and Wales) is indicative. There have been two large-scale studies of the effects of the Education (Scotland) Act 1981 (Johnson 1990), but the most comprehensive of these two studies was that conducted by a group at the University of Edinburgh (Adler et al. 1989; Petch 1986a and b). A major part of this work was a detailed study of the number and nature of requests made by parents for a school other than their catchment area school. The group found that there were considerable regional variations in the number of requests being made, with some rural areas having less than 1 per cent placing requests, and some cities such as Edinburgh having more than 16 per cent. These figures immediately indicate the limited effect that increased choice can actually have in rural areas. In such rural areas children would have to travel long distances to attend an alternative school, which is usually deemed undesirable in itself as well as expensive. Without greatly increased expenditure, significant choice of school is only possible in urban environments. In contrast to what many critics have predicted, the research also showed that in all the areas studied placing requests were made from parents of all social classes. The researchers could find no evidence to suggest that middle-class parents were making a disproportionate number of placing requests, although there was some evidence that those doing so were more likely to have stayed at school longer and to have attained higher educational qualifications. However, the nature of the requests from different social groups varied. Many requests from working-class parents were from those living in poor housing estates who wished their children to attend a school in a more middle-class or mixed social class area. In contrast, there were few middle-class parents who wished their children to attend a working-class school. The authors argue that at the secondary level the legislation is leading to a widening of educational inequalities and producing a two-tier system where schools are generally perceived as desirable or undesirable. Well-motivated parents and children were able to opt out of local working-class schools because they saw them as undesirable, but by doing so they ensured that their judgement was likely to become a reality for those children who remained. The authors argue (Adler et al. 1989: 215) that while the Act has led to the integration of a few pupils from areas of multiple deprivation into alternative schools, it has probably led to increased social segregation for those remaining in the local school. A separate national representative Scottish study (Echols et al. 1990) found that the largest single effect on the incidence of choice was not individual but structural, and arose from the local availability of options between which choices could be made. In other words, especially in the

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state sector, more choices were made where schools were closer together geographically. They found that it was the better-educated parents and those of higher social class who were more likely to have made a choice. For example, well-educated parents were almost twice as likely to have made a choice of state schools than poorly educated parents. They also found that the schools chosen tended to be those that had a higher social class intake and higher levels of attainment. These tended to be the older long-established schools which had been grammar schools before the 1965 reorganization and still retained some of their former prestige. The authors believe that the legislation on parental choice has increased social segregation between schools, and that the disproportionate gains in attainment made by children with parents who are manual workers, brought about by comprehensive education, are likely to be retarded or even reversed. A more recent and detailed analysis by the same research group (Willms and Echols 1992) draws upon a range of questionnaire and survey data and reinforces the earlier results. They found that parents who exercised choice were likely to be more highly educated and to have more prestigious occupations than those who sent their child to the designated school. Choosers tended to select schools with higher mean socioeconomic status and higher levels of attainment, but these differences in attainment were actually small once the differences in background characteristics of the pupils had been taken into account. The results suggest, once again, that the choice process is increasing betweenschool segregation, which may produce greater inequalities in attainment between social class groups. These studies show that rather than raising standards overall, choice leads to greater inequalities. The children of well-motivated, well-educated or wealthy families are more likely to apply to, and thus be selected by, the popular schools. The growing diversity of schools is reintroducing and adding to the range of problems of selection which comprehensive schools attempted to overcome.

Reforming the system A fair society will seek to ensure that all children receive the highest quality education possible. This is best done through a system of wellfunded comprehensive schools. A broad and balanced curriculum for all children up to the age of 14 overcomes problems of 'late development' and early selection. After this age, children are mature enough to be allowed to choose some degree of specialization in their education


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alongside a core curriculum. Each school should offer a range of specialisms in most of the academic, technological and creative areas. The establishment of a diversity of schools, each offering a single specialism (as proposed in the recent White Paper, Choice and Diversity [D£E 1992]) would automatically lead to greater differences in esteem and widened inequalities between schools. It would actually reduce opportunities for children to make mature choices about their futures. There is no perfect solution to the problem that some schools will be more popular than others, and that there will be insufficient places in some popular schools for all who apply. However, the problem is reduced if ways are found to minimize the differences in popularity between schools, and to ensure that some children are not disadvantaged in the choice-making process. The legitimate desires of parents who are concerned about the schooling of their own children need to be harnessed to encourage highquality education for all children. This is best done by clarifying the choice-making process and introducing clear, simple and unbiased selection criteria for oversubscribed schools. No child should be allocated to a school. Instead all families should be required to select three or four schools in order of preference. Funding should be made available for travel and other incidental costs to ensure that reasonable choices are not restricted by family income. Independent information centres and advisers should be established to encourage and help all families with this decision-making process. Where there are fewer applications than places available the first preference would be automatically granted. Schools would have no right to reject a child, and the power to exclude or expel a child would be removed from the schools and given to the LEA. Where schools are oversubscribed, successful applicants should be selected randomly from those who apply. Random selection is essential, for it guarantees that some parents are not able to ensure the success of their own children by purchasing a home near to the school they aspire to use, or by being able to present themselves as more committed and concerned at interview. Exceptions to the principle of random selection should be at an absolute minimum, and might include children with specific physical disabilities being granted preference for a school with special facilities. Random selection introduces uncertainty, so it becomes necessary for concerned parents to work for high-quality schools for all children rather than devoting their efforts entirely towards the schooling of their own children. Nor is the concept of random selection new in education. There are now several school districts within the USA where a form of lottery is used to select applicants. In many of these the choice with random

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selection process has been introduced to aid ethnic integration, and random selection occurs for places available within given ethnic categories (Yanofsky and Young 1992). It is also already occurring within the UK. At Djanogly City Technology College, in Nottingham, there is a requirement that the CTC select from the full ability range of the children who apply. All the children who apply are given a non-verbal test and are divided into nine ability levels on the basis of the results. Within each group children are selected randomly — with no account being taken of the presence of siblings, the nearness of the college to the home, or any other factor. While only a proportion of families make an active choice, this random selection within ability bands provides the fairest possible selection process. Once all families make an active choice and are given the means to make that choice meaningful, simple random selection from amongst all those who apply will suffice. Requiring all families to make a choice will broaden and deepen concern for education. More uncertainty in selection will ensure that high-quality schooling for all children will become a political imperative. Somewhat paradoxically, requiring all families to make a choice, where there is uncertainty of that choice being granted, will reduce the importance of that choice. An extended hierarchy of schools is less likely to develop and schools will be given the chance to ensure that they give the highest quality education possible to all children.

CHAPTER 6

From common schooling to selection? Affirming and contesting the comprehensive ideal,

1976-2001* Introduction In 1996 a series of lectures was held at the University of Oxford and subsequently published under the title of Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal (Pring and Walford 1997). At that time, following seventeen years of Conservative government, many were strongly concerned about the politically charged attack that was being made upon the school system attended by 85 per cent of secondary school students. The ideals of that system, its considerable achievements and the daily success of many teachers were being ignored and negated. In a period just before a general election was expected, the series of lectures affirmed the moral and educational ideals which inspired the creation of a system of comprehensive schooling, and showed how those ideals might be reflected in the organization and practice of schools and colleges in the future. That anticipated 1997 general election brought a Labour Government to power, but rather than strengthening the comprehensive system, Labour has introduced a series of measures which have deep continuities with previous Conservative policy. This chapter reviews the reasons for the need for comprehensive schooling, outlines Conservative attacks on that system and demonstrates that Labour's policy since its assumption of power has ignored many of the arguments for supporting comprehensive schooling.

The development of comprehensive schooling As Brian Simon (1997: 14) has illustrated, there was quite widespread support for a comprehensive system from well before the Second World * First published in Robert Phillips and John Furlong (eds), Education, Reform and the State: Politics, Policy and Practice (London: RoutledgeFalmer), 2001.

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War, even from such an unlikely source as the male grammar school teachers who were members of the Assistant Masters' Association. As long ago as 1925 they passed a resolution at their annual conference in favour of secondary education for all — in one type of school. 'If secondary schools of various types were set up', said the mover, 'it would mean that there would be in secondary schools of the present type [that is, grammar schools] a class which was bound to be looked upon as something socially superior to the children who would attend the new schools of the distinct types' (quoted in Rubinstein and Simon 1973: 15). But their voice was not heard. Following the war a tripartite or bipartite system was generally introduced, and progress towards comprehensive schooling only really began in 1956 when the beginnings of change occurred. From then until 1964—65 a speeding-up took place as Edward Boyle, then Secretary of State, removed some of the brakes on comprehensive education put in place by Conservative governments of the late 1950s. Following the general election of 1964, the Labour government published Circular 10/65, which formally declared that government's opposition to selection at eleven plus and requested all LEAs to reorganize their secondary schools on comprehensive lines. The Circular was withdrawn in 1970 when the Conservatives returned to power, but the policy was effectively reinstated in 1974 on the return of Labour. However, throughout the entire period — no matter who was in power — the proportion of children attending comprehensive schools rapidly increased. In 1971 only about 40 per cent of children in British LEAmaintained secondary schools were in comprehensives; by 1981 this had risen to about 90 per cent. As with most major social changes, this movement towards comprehensive education was the result of pressures from an uneasy alliance of groups and individuals with a range of ideologies, interests and visions for the future (Ball 1984; Benn and Simon 1972). By the mid-1950s there were many obvious problems with the tripartite (or more usually bipartite) system that was introduced after the Second World War. For example, it became clear that there was a considerable social class bias between the intakes to the three types of school in the tripartite system (Floud et al. 1956; Douglas 1964). The grammar schools were dominated by middle-class children, while the secondary modern schools were largely the preserve of the working class. The problem was largely seen to be the IQ tests that were generally used to select children, and arguments centred on the fairness of these tests for children from different backgrounds, the extent to which they were able to discriminate between children according to their abilities or their academic potential, and on the examinations having to be taken at an age when children were


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still developing at different rates (Yates and Pidgeon 1957). It was also found that the reliability of the tests was low and that children could be coached into obtaining higher scores in these examinations, even though they were supposed to measure some 'innate' abilities (Ford 1969). Even accepting a narrow definition of efficiency of selection based on what the IQ tests could measure, it was estimated that about 10 per cent of children were wrongly selected each year — half of these being wrongly selected for grammar schools and half wrongly going to secondary modern schools (Vernon 1957). By 1970, IQ tests were largely discredited as a means of selection, but most of the problems associated with them also occur in other ways of selecting. But 'accurate' selection was only part of the problem. In the late 1960s a variety of sociological studies of grammar and secondary modern schools also began to raise questions about the desirability of selection at 11, independently of the degree to which selection could be accurately achieved. The classic case studies of grammar and secondary modern schools by Lacey (1970) and Hargreaves (1967) showed the detrimental effects of selection and differentiation between and within schools. Those children at the bottom of a grammar school tended to think of themselves as failures and developed anti-school attitudes. Other studies highlighted the cultural conflict experienced by a working-class child in a grammar school. Where working-class children did manage to enter grammar schools the cultural expectations were often in stark contrast to their own (Jackson and Marsden 1962; Dale and Griffith 1965). A further important factor that led to comprehensive schools was an increased demand for a 'grammar school-type' education. This was partly due to rising expectations on the part of parents, but demographic trends also had their effect. The postwar 'bulge' entered secondary education at a time when only a few new grammar schools had been created. As the percentage of children being selected varied markedly between LEAs, in many areas, middle-class parents were finding that their children were not being admitted to the grammar schools which they had themselves attended (Ford 1969). Instead, their children were being forced to attend secondary moderns which they perceived (often correctly) were funded at a lower level, had poorer-paid and poorer-qualified teachers, and were only able to enter children for a limited range of public examinations. This individual concern about sons and daughters was largely transmuted to a call for greater equality of educational opportunity for all and greater national efficiency. It was believed that both of these would be provided through comprehensive education. But comprehensive schools also developed because there were many who believed that educating all local children in a single school, where

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they would have equal physical facilities and equal access to high-quality teachers, would raise the aspirations of all children and teachers, bring about greater equity within the schools and lead to greater opportunities outside in the world of work. It was hoped that mixing children from different social class backgrounds in the same school would lead to a lowering of barriers between classes and a reduction in class antagonism and class differences. This reason for comprehensive schools is far stronger now than it has ever been. But such schools challenge the dominant principle on which the British system of schooling has been historically based — selection of children for unequal provision. Throughout British history, social class and gender have been the major determinants of the quality of schooling that children received. While there has been some decrease in gender inequalities, we now live in a multicultural society that is increasingly harshly divided by class and ethnicity. Social mixing gives at

least some possibility for mutual understanding and greater equity. I have summarized elsewhere the long and acrimonious debate about the relative effectiveness of the selective and comprehensive systems (Walford 1997a). The most reasonable conclusion to be drawn from a variety of early studies is that any differences between the overall examination effectiveness of the two systems were small but, once comprehensives had become established, they appeared slightly to reduce social class differences in attainment. A more recent study, but still using old data (Kerckhoff et al. 1996), agrees that the average output of selective and comprehensive systems is much the same, but they found variations at school level that suggested that able children did better at grammar schools, while less able children did better in comprehensives. However, as Crook et al. (1999: 48—9) argue in their thorough survey of the literature, 'even if one accepts a system-level tendency it cannot then be assumed that the "superior" achievements of the academically able arise from the selective nature of the grammar schools rather than, for instance, the more favourable resourcing and teacher retention rates associated with these schools'. More significantly, all of the studies found that there were far larger differences between the examination successes of different schools of the same type than between the average examination results of different systems, even after such factors as social class had been taken into account (Gray 1990). Yet, as Benn (1997: 123) argues, the myth that better results flow from educating an academic elite separately, whether in their 'own' school or by streaming in comprehensive schools, still persists. Benn s own research (Benn and Chitty 1996: 286—7) compared schools where a majority of subjects were set against schools with a minority of subjects set, and found no difference in academic results.


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Conservative attacks on the comprehensive ideal However, in spite of the evidence generally in favour of comprehensives, during the early 1980s there were several attempts by Conservative-controlled LEAs to try to reintroduce selection by academic ability. All these direct attempts failed. In Solihull and Richmond-upon-Thames, for example, local parents campaigned against the proposed changes and won their demands for the retention of existing comprehensive schools (Walford and Jones 1986). As the all-out frontal attack on comprehensives did not work, a more gradual approach was adopted. Following the election of Margaret Thatcher's first government in 1979 a series of separate, yet interlinked, policies were introduced to support and encourage the selection of particular children for unequally funded schools. First came the Assisted Places Scheme of 1980, where poor but 'academically able' children were to be 'plucked like embers from the ashes' of the state system to enter private schools of high academic reputation. In practice, those families sufficiently knowledgeable about the procedures, and able to negotiate the choice and selection processes inherent in the scheme, were rewarded with more costly staffing and facilities than in the state sector (Edwards et al. 1989). The second support for selection occurred in 1986, when central government announced that it intended to establish a network of 20 City Technology Colleges. These were intended to provide free technology-enhanced education to selected children within particular innercity areas. Selection of specific children for inequitable provision was a central feature of the plan. In this case selection was not to be on academic criteria, but on 'deservingness'. In a study by Walford and Miller (1991) of the first CTC, it was shown that it was selecting those very parents who have the most interest in their children's education, and those children who are most keen and enthusiastic. Heads and teachers in nearby local authority schools argued that the CTC was selecting children who, while they might not be particularly academically able, had special skills and interests in sport, art, drama and other areas. These children were seen as invigorating the atmosphere of any school, providing models for other children, and being the most rewarding for teachers to teach. The 1988 Education Reform Act introduced further anti-comprehensive ideas. At first comprehensive grant-maintained schools were not officially allowed to select children by ability but many demanded a high degree of commitment from parents and children, a separate application, an 'informative' interview and sometimes a test. They found that if the barriers to entry were set high enough, self-selection would operate as an effective way of ensuring that 'deserving' families were selected.

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Giving grant-maintained schools the right to impose their own admissions procedures inevitably led to a form of selection where the children of parents who lacked the knowledge, interest or skills necessary to apply had no chance of being admitted. There were several aspects of the 1993 Education Act that reemphasized the government's attack on comprehensive education. The most important change was that all secondary schools were given the right to 'specialize' in one or more curriculum areas and select on the basis of particular aptitudes or abilities in music, drama, sport, art, technology or foreign languages. What is crucial is that it was deemed that the introduction of a 'specialism' did not necessitate an official 'change of character' as long as only up to 10 per cent of the intake were selected according to criteria related to the specialism. Further, greater specialization was evident in the Technology Colleges launched in late 1993 as a far cheaper alternative to the CTC programme. Rather than establish entirely new independent schools, this new non-statutory plan enabled existing schools to seek a much smaller amount of sponsorship and become eligible for enhanced central government funding. Initially, the element of autonomy that the CTCs exhibited was reflected in the scheme's restriction to voluntary-aided and grant-maintained schools, but the scheme was soon extended to include all LEA schools. The schools were expected already to have a strong and planned commitment to technology, science and mathematics and to be able to find sponsorship from industry in return for some seats on the school's governing body. The scheme was later developed into a Specialist Schools' Programme, with the announcement in 1994 of Language Colleges and further extended to include Sports and Arts Colleges in June 1996. The results of such a raft of changes were not unexpected. The research by Gewirtz et al. (1995) indicates that where curriculum specialisms were being introduced by schools, they were acting as selection mechanisms for high academic ability and middle-class children. In particular, the development of specialisms such as dance or music indirectly discriminated against working-class children, and allowed schools a greater chance to select 'appropriate' children. They show that, in practice, rather than schools becoming more diverse, the pressures of interschool competition has led to them becoming more similar in what they offer, but within a hierarchy of perceived ability to offer advantage. Gewirtz et al. (1995) conclude that local hierarchies of schools were developing where resources flowed from those children with greatest need to those with the least need. A series of papers from Gorard and Fitz (see Gorard 1999a; Gorard and Fitz 1998a and b) has partly challenged this general picture devel-


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oped from qualitative research. In their several papers they draw year-byyear comparisons using statistical data available from government sources of the social composition of schools. Using indicators such as the percentage of children in each school who have the right to free school meals (which is a commonly used indicator of poverty), they argue that in most cases social segregation is actually decreasing rather than increasing as the qualitative studies have found. They find reduced segregation in 84 out of 122 English LEAs. In their recent studies they have also used alternative indicators of deprivation such as the percentage of children with statemented special educational needs, with English as a second language or who are ethnically non-white. In all of these cases their calculations lead them to conclude that, overall, increased marketization and selection has not led to increased segregation. While they do find some cases where segregation appears to have increased, the balance of the evidence points in the opposite direction. There has been considerable debate about these findings, but the main difficulty is that all the indicators used are indicators of deprivation. Only about 20 per cent of children are eligible for free school meals, and the percentages of children with statemented special education needs, or with English as a second language, or who are ethnically non-white are smaller. These are measures of social disadvantage not social advantage, and are used as bipolar either/or indicators. Taking 'ethnically non-white' as a single category, for example, conceals the known differences in academic performance of children from different 'non-white'ethnic groups. These indicators thus do not give information on the whole distribution of social polarization, but only on how the quite severely disadvantaged have coped with marketization and selection compared with the rest. It is certainly not unimportant that this group may not have fared as badly as expected, but such data gives no information at all about how the most advantaged or even the average students have fared. The qualitative and quantitative research are not necessarily in disagreement. Additionally, while the usual social indicators of social class, income, wealth, ethnicity and gender are important, the detrimental effects of selection do not depend on disadvantage being linked to these variables. The process of being chosen for a school has now become highly complicated with local knowledge, interest in education and degree of motivation of parents and children being a vital indicator of successful acceptance of a child in a leading school. Children and families where there is a low level of interest in education simply do not give this process sufficient attention. The Conservative government's attack on comprehensive education was most clearly laid out in its last educational White Paper SelfGovernmentfor Schools (DfEE 1996), which made several more proposals

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that challenged comprehensive schools. The Paper proposed that all grant-maintained schools should be able to select up to 50 per cent of their pupils by general ability, or by ability or aptitude in particular subjects, without needing central approval. LEA Specialist Technology and Language Colleges were to be allowed to select up to 30 per cent of their pupils according to abilities or aptitudes in their specialist subject, and all LEA schools were to be given the right to select up to 20 per cent of their intake. Finally, and at last openly, the White Paper explicitly stated that the Conservative government wished to encourage the establishment of new grammar schools. It wished to encourage promoters of new sponsored grant-maintained schools to establish new grant-maintained grammar schools, and would encourage existing schools to become selective. In the period before the general election five new grammar schools were started through the sponsored grant-maintained schools programme (Walford 2000a). The resulting diversity of status, funding and accountability meant that while the Conservative government had only managed to increase the percentage of 'officially selective' schools by 1 per cent (Benn and Chitty 1996), Fitz and his colleagues (1997) estimated that by 1996 only 40 per cent of secondary schools were LEA-maintained and fully comprehensive. There was a growing number of schools which controlled their own admissions, and selection by ability, aptitude and a variety of other more covert mechanisms was increasing.

Labour attacks on the comprehensive ideal The Education Bill that resulted from the 1996 White Paper was published on 30 October 1996, but large parts of the Bill were abandoned when the general election was called in early 1997. The resulting 1997 Education Act contained none of the controversial changes indicated above. However, in July of the same year the new Labour government published its own White Paper, Excellence in Schools (DfEE 1997a), which had a whole chapter devoted to 'Modernizing the comprehensive principle'. This 'modernized' principle included firm backing for setting within schools and for a greater diversity of schools. The Paper stated that 'We are deeply committed to equal opportunities for all pupils.' But emphasized, 'This does not mean a single model of schooling' (p. 40). The use of the concepts 'diversity' and 'specialization' indicated distinct continuities with the previous government's policies (Edwards et al. 1999). On the other hand, the government quickly legislated for the manifesto commitment to end the Assisted Places Scheme, putting paid to this


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particular form of academic selection. However, the resulting 1998 School Standards and Framework Act had mixed implications for the comprehensive ideal. It replaced the system of county, voluntary and grant-maintained schools with a new system of community, voluntary and foundation schools which are funded using a common funding formula. This change meant that grant-maintained schools no longer had access to additional capital and current funding, and they now have LEA representatives on their governing bodies. The government's position on academic selection is more ambiguous. It has stated that it believes that selection by academic ability is unfair and divisive, and that it is acting to prevent its increase. However, it is clearly not prepared to act positively to decrease such selection (Webster and Parsons 1999). In a letter to Margaret Tulloch, Executive Secretary of the Campaign for State Education, Stephen Byers, Minister of State for Education, explains the government's position on partial selection in the following way: And yes, it is true that we are allowing existing partial selection to continue . . . We do, of course, recognize that partial selection clearly has created uncertainty and confusion for parents in some areas. But we also have to accept the possibility that there may be areas where partial selection by ability is not causing problems and there is no groundswell of opinion from parents or schools against it. In these circumstances it would be both heavy-handed and unnecessary for us to put an end to it simply on dogmatic grounds — we want to take the dogma out of education. (16 July 1998) It would appear that the government believes it would be 'dogmatic' to act to reduce the effects of something that it openly recognizes as divisive and unfair! Thus the 1998 Act contained several sections which deal with selection. While there is a general prohibition on selection by ability in all maintained schools, several major exceptions are established. The first permitted form of selection by academic ability reflects this desire to 'take the dogma out of education', for the Act allows partial selection arrangements based on ability or aptitude to continue if they were in place in 1997-98. But there must be no increase in the proportion of selective admission or any significant change in the method of selection. Where a school has been recognized as having a specialism in a particular subject, selection by aptitude for this subject may continue but must not exceed 10 per cent of the intake. The next exception actually enhances the comprehensive ideal, for selection is allowed where the purpose is to secure 'pupil-banding'such that an appropriate range of abilities is achieved in each school. This is still done in several Inner London education authorities.

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The final exception is, of course, grammar schools. On full selection by academic ability, the Act provided a complicated procedure whereby prospective and existing parents are able to vote to change the existing 164 state-maintained grammar schools into comprehensive schools. The details of the system that eventually followed through regulations are seen by many as being designed to make it as difficult as possible for any change to occur. In particular, before any ballot can be held, parents have to obtain signatures supporting such a ballot from 20 per cent of those entitled to vote. In mainly selective areas a wide range of parents and prospective parents are entitled to vote, but where there are only a few isolated grammar schools only parents of children in feeder primary schools will have a vote. In this case 'feeder' is defined as a school from which five or more children have progressed to the grammar school in the past three years. Private preparatory schools users may thus have a disproportionate influence, while parents living near to the school may not have a vote at all. The 1998 Act thus leaves the reorganization of the most divisive element of the state-maintained sector to the wishes of particular groups of parents who currently (or are about to) use the schools. The extent of this divisiveness can be assessed from figures given to a written parliamentary question on 11 May 1999. The figures give the percentage of children known to be eligible for free school meals in grammar schools compared with those in maintained secondary schools for each of 32 local education authorities with grammar schools. The average ratio indicates that the proportion of children eligible for free school meals in grammar schools is about a fifth of the national average. It is far lower in every LEA, with Birmingham showing 5.1: 34.3, Kent 3.4: 12.9 and Buckinghamshire 1.6: 7 (Education Parliamentary Monitor 1999). Yet, the Labour government has not only allowed existing full and partial selection by academic ability to continue but also encouraged an extension of the specialist schools programme, where so-called 'comprehensive' schools can provide a 'specialism' and select up to 10 per cent of intake on the basis of 'aptitude' in that particular specialism. The Secretary of State has tried hard to argue that selection by aptitude for a specialism does not imply selection by ability or any ethnic or social classrelated criteria, but critics are unconvinced (Edwards 1998). In contrast, one further aspect of the 1998 Act might have a positive effect on the comprehensive principle, for it established the office of adjudicator to make judgements on the fairness of aspects of school organization and admissions. The decisions of the adjudicator will be crucial on the issue of partial selection, and early indications are that some schools with partial selection will be required to reduce the proportion selected. In the area around Watford, for example, five former grant-maintained


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schools have been forced to reduce their partial selection from 50 per cent to 35 per cent (Hackett 1999) to make it easier for local children to find a place. A small change, but at least in the right direction. Various other policies of the Labour government can be seen as indirectly weakening the comprehensive principle. One such policy is the increased level of ideological support given to the private sector. Within the first few months the new Labour government had established an advisory group to focus on the development of partnership between the state and independent sectors. In the autumn 1997 edition of the Independent Schools Information Service Magazine, David Blunkett, Secretary of State

for Education and Employment, wrote: Constructive collaboration and partnership is the way forward in education. We know that there is much that we can learn from the private sector and much that the private sector can share. We want to put aside the divisions of the past and build a new partnership which recognizes that private schools can make a real contribution to the communities in which they are situated. (Blunkett 1997) In November 1997 Stephen Byers, Minister for School Standards, echoed these views in a highly significant speech at the Girls' Schools Association Annual Conference. He announced an end to 'educational apartheid' between the state-maintained and private sectors and proposed a new partnership between them. He set out three 'golden rules' for Labour's new attitude towards private schools: (1) high standards in independent schools will not be compromised; (2) change will be voluntary; (3) there will be no imposition from above. Further, he announced that ^500,000 was to be made available for a partnership scheme between independent and state-maintained schools. This was later raised to ^600,000, due to the large number of good applications, with about half of the funding coming from the Sutton Trust - a charitable trust. Small grants of up to .£25,000 were made available for innovative schemes that made links between schools in the two sectors and contributed to raising standards. What is significant about this scheme is not the relatively small amounts of funding made available but the major change in policy that it represents and the ideological support it gives to the private sector. The unspoken assumption behind the scheme is that private schools are 'better' than state-maintained schools, and that they should share some of their expertise and facilities with local statemaintained schools. While it is certainly correct that many of the major schools do have far better facilities for sport, science, music and so on, it is not clear that the teachers in such schools are necessarily 'better' or that they are ideally suited to 'help' children from comprehensive schools

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who often come from rather different social class backgrounds than the children they usually teach. In early 1999 the scheme was extended for a further two years. As part of this new relationship with the private sector, the government also made it clear that it does not intend to remove charitable status from private schools. This had been seen as a significant threat in the 1992 general election, as it would have led to increases in school fees. While abolition of charitable status was not a part of Labour's 1997 programme, the clear abandonment of the policy only came in 1998. A further major part of the 1988 legislation has a more mixed potential effect on the comprehensive ideal. Education Action Zones are designed to develop programmes that help raise educational standards in deprived inner cities or rural areas. Typically, a zone comprises between 15 and 25 primary, secondary and special schools, working in partnership with local parents, Early Years Providers, businesses, the LEA, community organisations, TEC(s), careers service, colleges, other statutory agencies (such as health authorities, the youth service and the police) and others. The strategic direction of the zone will be set by an Action Forum. (DfEE 1999: 5) The basic idea behind the zones is that schooling in certain deprived areas could be improved by targeting greater financial and human resources and by involving a wide variety of local people and organizations in a new partnership. The details of the policy have changed slightly since their original announcement in the 1997 White Paper (DfEE 1997a), but each zone receives up to ^ 1 million extra funding a year for five years, of which the government provides ^750,000. The additional ^250,000 has to be found from sponsors who are able to contribute in cash or in kind. Here is one of the problems, for this need for sponsorship is linked to the way in which zones are selected. Rather than identify target areas of deprivation where Education Action Zones are thought to be necessary, the government has left it to local initiative to develop proposals for zones and to submit bids for funding. Moreover, the zones have been given various exemptions from the legal requirements under which all other state-maintained schools operate. First, they do not have to teach the national curriculum, which Hatcher (1998) and Chitty (1998) both believe could lead to a limited and more directly work-related curriculum for some children in disadvantaged areas. Second, teachers do not need to be paid on the national agreed salary scale. The intention here is that teachers in the zones will be paid more, but there are concerns that this could be another step towards local pay-bargaining. Third, the zones may put private consul-


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tants in management positions within schools, and they need not be trained teachers. All of these aspects are potential threats to the comprehensive ideal, but the idea of positive discrimination in school provision is one which accords well with increasing equity between groups.

Conclusion The comprehensive ideal affirms that children's education should not be disadvantaged by their backgrounds, and that the state should provide free, high-quality education for all in comprehensive schools. With the exception of positive discrimination, selection of specific children for differentially funded and supported schools clearly violates this principle and encourages a move back to a discredited system. In contrast with what might be expected from a Labour government, many Labour policies appear to be designed to generate greater fragmentation into different types of school, greater selection according to a range of different criteria and greater inequity in what schools offer. Market forces (under the guise of choice and diversity) reflect and promote a different set of values; growing inequalities between schools militate against social equity. Much of the present government's educational policy will increase injustice and inequity. It will lead to a system of unequally funded schools which will provide very different educational experiences for children of different abilities, social classes and ethnic groups. It will fail to raise educational standards for all. I agree that the comprehensive ideal needs to be developed to take account of the very different social and economic circumstances of the new millennium. The future will demand that the need to develop a range of personal and social abilities is taken far more seriously. The different forms of intelligence will need to be nurtured; the new opportunities for organizing learning which technology makes possible will need to be exploited. Most of all, however, there will be a need to ensure that every child has access to the highest quality schooling possible, and that provision does not depend on privilege and social background. The demands and opportunities of the new millennium will require modification to the form of comprehensive schools that thrived in the 1970s, but the ideals on which they were based are well worth re-examining and reaffirming. An acceptance of the inequities of selection is a retrogressive step.


PART 3

Studying School Choice


CHAPTER 7

A panic about school choice*

The micropolitics of school choice One of the problems of applying market principles to education is that it may lead to greater inequity, for each family has a potentially different relationship with the local micromarket of schools. While some families are knowledgeable and concerned about local school provision, others are less well informed and interested. While some families have the material and cultural resources successfully to negotiate application and selection procedures, others may lack either or both of these, or set a low priority on educational concerns. There is growing evidence that these differences in the relationship to the market of schools are not randomly distributed but are likely to relate closely to the families' relationships to other financial and cultural markets (see, for example, Adler et al. 1989; Hunter 1991; Thomas and Dennison 1991; Walford 1991a; David et al. 1994; Gewirtz et al. 1994; Gewirtz et al. 1995). Although the relationship is not simple, these studies have found that families from higher socioeconomic groups are more likely to be knowledgeable and exercise choice than families from lower socioeconomic groups. For example, research carried out by Gewirtz et al. (1995: 54) found that 'the pattern of class-related orientations to choice in the whole data set is strong. Altogether middle-class "choosers" are much more active in the educational market place.' Similarly, when Edwards et al. (1989: 215) studied the Assisted Places Scheme, which provides support for selected children to enter private schools, they found that children of professional and middle-class parents predominated amongst place-holders, and concluded: 'class-related * Steven Carroll and Geoffrey Walford; first published in Educational Studies 22.3 (1996): 393-407.

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social, educational and cultural factors not only inform "choice" but, more importantly, they enable some groups to recognize its possibilities and execute it more advantageously than others'. Both cultural and material resources are a clear advantage in the educational marketplace. Material resources, for example, may be used to maximize opportunities for transport. This allows more schools to be visited prior to choice and, as longer journeys can be afforded on public transport or private cars or taxis can be used for awkward routes, enables families to choose from a more extensive range of schools. Perhaps more important, however, is the ability of wealthy families to buy a house within the catchment area of a popular school. This particular advantage, sometimes called 'selection by mortgage', has long been central to the pattern of inequality of provision for children of differing social classes. Put simply, prior to the 1988 Education Reform Act, when there were fixed catchment areas for each school, families could ensure that their children attended a chosen school by moving to within that school's catchment area. A knowledge of school catchment areas was an essential prerequisite for anyone wishing to sell a home, and estate agents were well aware of the 'premium' price that a particular school could add to the value of properties. In many ways, as Stephen Ball argued in 1988, the 'so-called comprehensive reform never really happened'. The so-called comprehensive system allowed affluent and well-motivated parents to ensure the quality of schooling for their children within the maintained sector. Within the former tripartite system, there had always been the risk that their children would not be selected for grammar school and would either have to attend a 'second-class' secondary modern school or be moved to the private sector. In contrast, the 'comprehensive' system gave security, for it allowed parents to invest in a house within the catchment area of the selected popular school and thus ensure that their children were admitted. This explains why there was so little pressure at the local level to return to selective schooling once the comprehensives had been established. National opinion polls have sometimes shown majorities in favour of more grammar schools, but when the possibility has emerged locally, this support has evaporated. In Solihull in the early 1980s, for example, it was the affluent, middle-class parents in the south of the borough who campaigned to stop two of their schools becoming academically selective: they had paid dearly to ensure that their own children were destined for these highly valued schools and did not wish to forgo the return on their investment. Children from the affluent middle-class areas were well catered for. In addition to their strong parental support and stocks of cultural

STUDYING SCHOOL CHOICE

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capital, the active parent—teacher associations ensured that any necessary extras were provided. These schools were successful and efficient and would ensure that there was a high chance of adequate certification to legitimise social class reproduction. There was certainly no social mixing with the Birmingham overspill children living in the north of the borough. (Walford and Jones 1986: 251) In theory, the 1988 Education Reform Act added uncertainty to such calculations, for open enrolment and greater choice were designed to made it possible for families outside the former catchment area to apply to popular schools. On the surface, such a change would appear to weaken the middle class's hold on popular schools and allow greater access to these schools by other social groups. In the following casestudy, however, it will be shown that, after an initial period of confusion, the middle class has retained its hold on popular schools, even if that control is now in a modified form.

The case of Sutton Coldfield Sutton Coldfield provides a fascinating example of the effects of legislation on school choice within an affluent suburb. Although only seven miles from the centre of Birmingham, the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield has ancient origins. The old market town was important in the Middle Ages, and several medieval buildings and the old parish church still survive. Sutton Park, which adjoins the town centre, is one of the largest and finest parks in the country with over 2,000 acres of woodlands and lakes. It was presented to the Warden of the Royal Town by a charter of Henry VIII, and is still administered by the local council. John Vesey, the town's most famous native son, became Bishop of Exeter in 1519 and founded, amongst other institutions, a grammar school which still survives and carries his name. As might be guessed from this description, Sutton Coldfield is now a highly prosperous suburb essentially serving as a commuter area for the City of Birmingham. It has a population of around 100,000, and is characterized by a number of wealthy housing estates, particularly to the north of the town. Prior to 1974, the town was part of Warwickshire, but was moved on local government reorganization (and against local pressure) into the newly formed West Midlands Metropolitan County, to form part of an enlarged Birmingham City. This history is important, for it explains why, for many years, Sutton Coldfield had entry to secondary

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schools at age 12 rather than 11 as in the rest of Birmingham. It simply retained the age of transfer that had formerly applied in that part of Warwickshire. Although Birmingham has been Labour-controlled for many years, Sutton Coldfield was able to retain its selective grammar school system, for Birmingham had also retained its own system. By the early 1990s, Sutton Coldfield was thus served by two grammar schools, Bishop Vesey's Grammar for boys and Sutton Girls' Grammar, and five so-called comprehensive schools, one of which was Roman Catholic. The two grammar schools lie in the centre of the town, and four of Sutton's comprehensives (Fairfax, John Wilmott, Plantsbrook and Bishop Walsh RC) are clustered around the centre area. Only one, Arthur Terry, is situated some distance away in the north. While there is variation in the popularity of these schools, they are all reasonably highly regarded and serve a predominantly middle-class clientele. In the early 1990s Birmingham City Council made the decision to change the age of transfer in Sutton Coldfield in order to bring Sutton Coldfield into line with the rest of Birmingham and make it easier for families living outside Sutton to make a request for a Sutton school. Thus, after some controversy, in September 1992 the age of transfer from primary to secondary education in Sutton Coldfield was changed from 12 to 11. Sutton Coldfield was in effect plunged into the educational marketplace from which the later age of transfer had previously shielded it. In 1992 two groups of children were transferred to secondary schools — those aged 11 and 12. The result was that two of Sutton's five comprehensives were heavily oversubscribed in 1992 (see table 7.1). At the new eleven plus age of transfer Fairfax School attracted the most preferences and, with only 210 places on offer, 218 families were unsuccessful in their application — 50.9 per cent of all first-preference applications. Bishop Walsh R C rejected 33.9 per cent of its first-preference applicants, but the other three schools were able to offer places to some of their second-preference applicants. This situation has become common in many towns, but what was of central importance was that families who had made an unsuccessful firstpreference application to either Fairfax or Bishop Walsh R C had to live close to their second-preference school if they were to stand any chance of obtaining a school in Sutton Coldfield. As the schools which took second-preference applicants only took a relatively small number of them, and as families living nearest each school were given priority over those further away, the schools drew second-preference applicants from a small effective catchment area. This was a particular problem for families living to the south of Sutton Coldfield who were at a tactical disadvantage

STUDYING SCHOOL CHOICE Table 7.1 1992

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Allocation of secondary school places in Sutton Coldfield in

School Arthur Terry 11 + Arthur Terry 12+ Fairfax 11+ Fairfax 12+ John Wilmott 11+ JohnWilmott 12+ Plantsbrook 11+ Plantsbrook 12+ Bishop Walsh 11+ Bishop Walsh 1 2 +

Standard number 210 210 180 180 180 180 210 210 120 120

First preferences

Places allocated

Disappointed first preferences

206 214 428 335 137 108 221 127 227 142

240 210 210 180 210 189 240 222 150 120

(-34) 4 218 155 (-73) (-81) (-19) (-95) 77 22

because their homes were not close to any of Sutton Coldfield's comprehensive schools. When the allocation of places was announced in March 1992, over 140 Sutton Coldfield families had been 'disappointed' in their wish to obtain a place within Sutton Coldfield. This figure was some 4 per cent higher than Birmingham's average for failing to meet any of the three preferred schools (7.75 per cent of all children transferring to secondary school in Birmingham in 1992). These families were offered places at less popular comprehensives within the Birmingham area, including places within schools serving predominantly working-class council estates. Meanwhile, children from these working-class estates might well (because they used their first preferences strategically) be given places in Sutton Coldfield schools. To say that these Sutton Coldfield families were 'disappointed' would severely understate their enraged response. As is discussed in the next section, one result was the formation of a pressure group which aimed to ensure that all Sutton Coldfield children had the right to a Sutton Coldfield school. The situation was also not quite as dramatic as the figures might suggest, as some of these 'disappointed' children might have been offered places at the two grammar schools. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School accepted 124 boys and Sutton Girls' Grammar School accepted 150 girls, but only a proportion of those children would have been from Sutton Coldfield. Moreover, the situation had been complicated by the transfer of the two age groups at the same time (11 + and 12+), so, following a local campaign, for 1992 the LEA decided to placate parents by raising the intake beyond the standard number in all five comprehensives by 30 pupils each. These extra 150 places alleviated the problem for 1992, but the logic of the marketplace meant that similar problems would reappear in subsequent years.

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In 1993 Sutton Coldfield's schools were again oversubscribed. Table 7.2 shows that, once again, extra places were allocated to schools beyond their standard number. By this time Fairfax School had become grantmaintained and no figures were available, but Arthur Terry still rejected 24.1 per cent of first-preference applicants, Plantsbrook 30.9 per cent and Bishop Walsh R C 23.1 per cent. Only John Wilmott was able to offer places to some of its second-preference applicants. Table 7.2 1993

Allocation of secondary school places in Sutton Coldfield in

School (age 11+)

Standard number

First preferences

Arthur Terry Fairfax John Wilmott Plantsbrook Bishop Walsh RC

210 316 figures not available 180 205 210 317 120 193

Places allocated for Sept. 1993

Disappointed first preferences

240

76

242 219 148

(-37) 98 45

The results are clear. In most cases Sutton Coldfield families could only be certain of obtaining a Sutton Coldfield place if first preference was given to the nearest comprehensive. If first preference was given to a school at some distance from their home they risked rejection and the possibility that any second or third preference for a Sutton Coldfield school would also be rejected. Instead, places in Sutton Coldfield could be occupied by children from families living outside Sutton Coldfield. In announcing the secondary school places for September 1993 Birmingham City's Education (Services) subcommittee reported: 'The demand for places in the 5 Sutton Coldfield secondary schools has remained high with a further increase in applications over last year including some from extra-district areas,' and added, 'As long as parents name their "local" school there is usually no problem.'

PANIC action How did the residents of Sutton Coldfield respond to this new situation? As indicated above, many parents were enraged at the outcome of the 1992 allocation process, and ran a successful campaign that resulted in the raising of the intake beyond standard admission numbers for the five comprehensive schools. This campaign was largely coordinated through a group that took the name PANIC (Parents Against No Individual Choice).


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The data discussed in this section were gathered by way of an in-depth interview in 1993 with one of the principal members of PANIC, and through an analysis of local newspaper coverage of the PANIC campaign. PANIC provides a fascinating example of a small, single-issue pressure group that had considerable local influence. The way in which PANIC formed illustrates how quickly such pressure groups can start campaigning, given the existence of a number of well-motivated people who have the necessary cultural capital and are familiar with bureaucratic procedure and the process of government. PANIC was soon formed after the Thursday, 5 March 1992 announcement of place allocation for secondary schools. A large number of families had not received their first preference and over 140 had not received any of their three preferences in Sutton Coldfield. On 6 March the issue was highlighted on Central TV regional news and on the Ed Doolan local radio show. Dave Rollowa, a parent whose child had not been granted his preferred school, arranged a meeting for similarly frustrated parents. He was immediately contacted by Maureen Murphy who, in obtaining a second-preference school, and as Chair of the Wamley Resident's Association (within Sutton Coldfield) was concerned that a number of Wamley residents had failed to obtain a Sutton Coldfield school. She suggested forming a pressure group to campaign on the 'lack of choice' in Sutton Coldfield, and PANIC was subsequently established. The PANIC committee was small, having six 'officers' who organized funding, publicity and 'awareness' meetings. When the committee was originally formed they also employed a barrister to examine the possibility of a judicial review of the allocation system, and looked at the possibility of setting up an unofficial school. Our interviewee explained: To start with it broke off into several subsections, a campaigning section to raise money, then there was another group looking at a secret school. And we were prepared to start a school — it's happened in Sutton in the past actually, in 1985 there was a problem with Fairfax school [shortage of places] . . . It [the 1992 'school'] was all ready to go but eventually we got every child sorted. Each 'officer' was in contact with 'primary school coordinators' who were parents with children at Sutton Coldfield's primary schools who volunteered to distribute leaflets and tell other parents when meetings were organized; information would be included in school newsletters or on posters outside the schools themselves. The objectives of the committee were twofold: first there was the desire to change the way in which places were allocated in Sutton

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Coldfield, as committee member John Woodcock stated: 'The most important thing as far as we are concerned is that we have a system that will enable local communities to be identified and recognized. We want our children to be educated within our communities, and travelling five or six miles to school is not reasonable' (quoted in the Sutton Coldfield Observer, 26 February 1993). Vice-chairman Richard Diebel concurred: 'We want the council to look at different ways of allocating places because whilst it might work for the rest of Birmingham it obviously doesn't work for us' (quoted in the Sutton Coldfield News, 5 March 1993). The committee believed that every child in Sutton Coldfield had the right to an education in Sutton. Concern centred on families living outside Sutton Coldfield making requests for Sutton Coldfield schools. One letter (10 March 1993) sent to Birmingham's Education Department argued that If people outside of Sutton had indicated their nearest local schools where there is ample surplus capacity then there would not be such a problem for Sutton people. There is however little or no choice for Sutton families due to the influx of children from outside of Sutton. This indicates that children from outside of Sutton are being given preferential treatment and does not ensure that all families in Birmingham are being treated equally. Concern also focused on the environment that Sutton Coldfield children might have to be taught in if they were allocated schools that served predominantly working-class council estates. As our interviewee related: We went and had a look at the [council estate] school . . . and the amount of computers and stuff that it's got and we were all gobsmacked — we'd love those sort of facilities in ours. But it's a differ ent community, it's a totally different community and they [Sutton Coldfield children] wouldn't survive . . . Why won't those people go to their own local school? — that's th question that's got to be asked . . . We want to stay in our community; why do they want to go out of their community where there is ample spare capacity? The PANIC committee's second objective was to help parents who had been frustrated in choice, to campaign on their behalf, and also to raise the awareness of other parents to the dangers of making a non-strategic choice. Vice-chairman Richard Diebel said: 'PANIC can provide parents with moral support — we have all been down the same route an they are not on their own' (quoted in the Sutton Coldfield Observer, 1


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March 1993). The members publicized the problems and tried to warn parents of the potential difficulties of inappropriate choices. They distributed leaflets containing 'educational health warnings', and claimed to have prevented the problems of March 1993 reaching the scale of those of March 1992. Vice-chairman Richard Diebel stated: Because of our hard work campaigning and publicising the problem all the parents did find a solution satisfactory to them, and those choosing this year did so more prudently, with many making the most local school their first choice. But this doesn't represent choice in terms of quality of education but is more a matter of tactical decisions. (Sutton Coldfield News, 5 March 1993) An alternative interpretation is given in the minutes of the Education (Services) sub-committee (6 April 1993) which claimed: The difficulties reported last year about the concerns of families living in the three northern wards of the city have been eased to a considerable degree as a result of a series of school meetings where officers were able to explain to parents and governors the difficulties which other parents had experienced in the previous year's secondary transfer process. PANIC'S campaign involved meetings with Sutton Coldfield MP Norman Fowler, who addressed a meeting of worried parents at Sutton Town Hall in March 1992. They arranged meetings with the LEA, and also hired a bus which was driven to Birmingham's International Convention Centre to deliver a petition to John Patten MP (then Secretary of State for Education and Science) complaining about the problems in Sutton Coldfield. But PANIC's main influence was in raising parent's awareness of the realities of choice in an area of oversubscribed schools. The committee arranged a number of 'awareness' meetings at one of the primary schools, organized a float for Sutton's Carnival, participated in the Sutton 'fun run' wearing PANIC T-shirts, and even organized a balloon launch to publicize their campaign. These events have been covered by a sympathetic local press which have announced meetings and printed headlines such as 'Dad's Jail Vow at School Decision' (Sutton Coldfield Observer, 12 March 1993); 'Help at Hand for Disappointed Parents' (Sutton Coldfield News, March 1993); 'New Row Erupts over School Places Dilemma' (Sutton Coldfield Observer, 29 January 1993), and 'New Meeting Amid Fears of Repeat School Places Row' (Sutton Coldfield News, 21 January 1993).

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The views of local parents As part of a wider study of school choice, twenty parents from Sutton Coldfield were interviewed in 1993 about their decision-making processes. The sample of parents was taken from those having children at two primary schools. Envelopes containing an introductory letter and a stamped addressed reply envelope were posted to all the parents of children in Year 6 (i.e. those children about to transfer to secondary school). Of 100 families invited to help, 38 replied positively and twenty of these families were interviewed in depth about their choice of secondary school. As some parents were interviewed as a couple, 27 parents were interviewed in total. Twelve of the children were girls and eight were boys. The response was such that the quota of twenty families was easily filled. It was decided to spread the interviews evenly between early and late replies. This ensured that if there were any differences between parents who replied quickly and those who replied late then both would be covered by the research. While there were some exceptions, the sample was predominantly middle-class, with more than half being from social class I or II. Fourteen of the 20 occupied homes in a council tax band with value greater than .£88,000, and seventeen were in homes with a value greater than ^68,000. None of the homes was valued at less than ^52,000. Parents were contacted while the children were still attending primary school. This allowed parents' views to be assessed as closely as possible to the time when they had actually been involved in the decision-making process. They were interviewed from March to August 1993, the period directly after the announcement of secondary school places. This was not only the most practical and convenient time to interview parents but also ensured that all parents were at a similar point in the decisionmaking process. Interviews were chosen rather than questionnaires in order to build a detailed picture of how and why these parents had reacted to legislation on choice. A tape recorder was used in all but two of the interviews, and the recorded part of the interviews lasted between 40 and 70 minutes. Concern about choice and the problems which had occurred in 1992 emerged as a dominant theme from the twenty sets of parents interviewed from Sutton Coldfield. It was also clear that PANIC had been influential in shaping parent's anxieties, with only two parents claiming not to have heard of the pressure group. The most common complaint was simply that parents felt they had no choice in Sutton Coldfield, and were obliged to express first preference for the nearest comprehensive. Mrs (6)* com* Numbers in brackets refer to the interview number.


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merited: 'There is no choice so I never considered any other choices, because there's no point, and you wouldn't get in, and you'd end up at [a council estate]. There's no point putting any other school down as the first choice because you wouldn't even get into Sutton.' The (13)s also argued there was no choice in Sutton: Mrs (13): 'We haven't got freedom of choice in Sutton.' Mr (13) agreed: 'We haven't got freedom of choice because of the way the places are allocated . . . If you miss out on first choice then you move to second choice, and your second choice - you're then in second position behind everybody who picks that as first choice, and so on.' The (19)s said that if they had preferred a non-local comprehensive they would not have risked putting it down as first preference; Mr (19) said: We'd have been frightened that she might have been excluded by virtue of the fact that we don't live near enough to qualify immediately, and if we had put down Arthur Terry as second choice we might have not got her into there, and not got her into third choice as well, and goodness knows where she would have ended up. Many parents said they had felt frustrated in choice for they felt compelled to request the nearest comprehensive even when they preferred another more distant Sutton Coldfield school. Mrs (5) said: 'I had heard via neighbours and friends that Fairfax was the school, but it wasn't our nearest school, and I knew that if I put Fairfax first [child] wouldn't have got into Fairfax, so therefore I put it as my second choice.' The (16)s had also preferred Fairfax but had not even listed it on their form; they had listed their nearest school first to ensure a Sutton Coldfield school. Mrs (16) argued: 'In actual fact I was very keen on Fairfax, but because of what happened last year; if you live over one and a half miles away you didn't get a choice. We put John Wilmott second (to Arthur Terry) because it was less popular and we might have got a chance.' Mrs (1) agreed: Right. Well our first choice would in reality have been Fairfax; we liked it very much when we went round it, but because of where we live and because of the popularity of Fairfax last year — the problems people had — we know people who live nearer Fairfax who got turned down even though it was their first choice so we couldn't take that risk, whereas we knew that as we were fairly near Arthur Terry, we'd definitely get in. Mrs (20) argued similarly: 'I'd have liked her to go to Fairfax, but I didn't put it down because if she hadn't got in she wouldn't have got in at Arthur Terry for her second choice.'

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Some parents felt that the government had been sending misleading signals about choice. Mrs (18) complained that unless one was wealthy enough for private school, or clever enough to pass the eleven plus, then there was no choice: 'Well for a lot of people there is no choice still, is there? Let's be honest; and it just bothers me to see the members of the government going on television and the media and trying to convince us that there is. You've got to be clever or rich, and if you're neither of those you've had it.' The (4)s agreed. Mrs (4) said: 'It's all very well giving parents choice, but you've got to be able to deliver the goods . . . this is what the problem's been here in Sutton, a lot of parents thought that they had the choice, and some of them have actually moved to the area to have this choice, and then they find they haven't got it any more.' Her husband added: 'As I see, this government [is] saying choice is everything, that's what I see the message coming across, and I wouldn't agree with that because if it's left to a completely free market — it's the law of the jungle to me, and there are some people that just can't cope.' There was a belief shared by a few of the respondents that the problems of 1992 had been caused by parental ignorance of the system. Mr (12) stated: 'I know the problems that occurred last year, a lot of it was parental ignorance more than anything else that created a lot of problems . . . They created merry hell because the system had let them down when really they didn't understand the system and didn't play the system.' Mrs (18) said: 'Information from the previous year suggested that Sutton schools were oversubscribed, and either had to make extra places or [be] rejected — I mean, you obviously know — children being given places at [council estate] from Sutton because they made inappropriate choices. I don't think they understood the criteria for prioritizing choice.' More parents cited the change in the age of transfer as the root cause of the popularity of Sutton Coldfield's schools, with children from outside Sutton Coldfield applying for places. Mr (10) explained: When they were transferring at 12 there was no problem, obviously, because Birmingham was transferring at 11, so there was no way that children from other schools in Birmingham could actually get into Sutton schools. A lot of parents last year put Fairfax as first choice, so they got full up very quickly from the catchment area. Now [with] Arthur Terry, Wilmott and Plantsbrook, there were people who put Fairfax down as first choice, and Arthur Terry down as second choice . . . this was the problem. However, he also added, 'I don't see why Sutton should have a wall round it.' Mrs (3) said: 'I know last year there was a great commotion in the Sutton area because there were children from Sutton who were actu-


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ally refused places at local Sutton schools because there were children coming in from the other side of Birmingham. So these parents were getting their free choice but the parents of the children who actually lived in Sutton weren't.' Mrs (6) stated: 'As soon as they [the admission ages] came down, that was when the trouble came, because outside Sutton, they came into our schools. How they [parents] were surprised that it happened I just don't know . . . I don't think the parents realised how it would happen, and of course that's how PANIC turned up.' PANIC appear to have been successful in raising awareness of choice parameters within the sample of parents interviewed from Sutton Coldfield. A number of parents pointed to the influence the group had had. Mrs (13) commented: I think they were quite effective because, I mean, there was a lot of newspaper coverage, they got MPs and councillors involved, I mean, I don't think they have achieved as much as they wanted to achieve, but they certainly highlighted the problem which I wouldn't have been aware of if they hadn't have done. Mrs (1) agreed: Well, yes, they are influential I think. I don't know how big they are, obviously they were formed by parents last year whose children didn't get into the schools they chose, but they have been very good in organising meetings. They're a good pressure group I think with Birmingham City Council — Birmingham Education Authority, and ensure that the local children get their places, and they continued this year even though they're parents of children from last year. I don't know whether it's as big as it was, but we have certainly been invited to meetings, and we all joined in a fun run on their benefit

in Sutton Park last summer and a lot of people turned out for that. Mrs (5) said: 'They had some influence in that I thought there's no way I'm going to put Fairfax first as a comprehensive, so they did have an influence and they do send out a lot of stuff about parents not getting their first choice of comprehensives.' Mrs (17) also believed PANIC had done good work: 'They seem to have done a good job this year, there are only a few children who haven't got places now. I certainly would have gone myself if I felt there was any doubt whatsoever that she wouldn't get a place.' Others welcomed the support PANIC was assumed to give if they had been unsuccessful in obtaining a Sutton Coldfield school. Mr (4) said: 'We immediately would have put immense pressure on anybody we could have done to get her in, because she had set her heart on it. We

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would have gone to PANIC — have you heard of PANIC? — and anybody else we could have thought of.' Mrs (8) said she had not attended a meeting but would have attended if her application had been unsuccessful: 'I would have done if she hadn't got a place — it [a leaflet] said if they don't get a place by the weekend to go along on Tuesday.' Of the few detractors Mr (12) remarked: 'I was of the personal opinion that they were somewhat of a bunch of scaremongers... I think something like PANIC was set up in "panic" more than anything else.' The overwhelming feeling, however, was that PANIC had considerable influence over how these parents perceive choice in Sutton Coldfield. The group was widely known, and their influence was disproportionate to their size.

Conclusion It is now recognized that the comprehensive system was never truly comprehensive, and that affluent and well-motivated families were always able to ensure their children attended popular schools by moving to a home within the appropriate catchment area. Selection by academic ability was replaced by selection by the size of the family's mortgage. This situation actually suited some sections of the middle class well, for it reduced the uncertainty of academic selection. It meant that if they wished, middle-class families could ensure not only that their children attended a popular school but one that was also relatively homogeneous in its middle-class intake. According to the rhetoric, the 1988 Education Reform Act should have changed all this. Families are able to choose whichever schools they wished so that, wherever they live, families can apply to the most popular schools. The reality, of course, is different. Choice can only be applicable up to the capacity of the schools. Once the schools are full, it is the schools that choose families rather than vice versa (Walford 1994a). The case-study of Sutton Coldfield shows this process in action. Sutton Coldfield provides a particularly interesting example of the workings of the quasi-market of schools. The area is predominantly prosperous middle-class and serves as a commuter suburb for Birmingham. However, in terms of school choice until recently it had formed a distinct and separate system. The change in the age of transfer to 11 in 1992 pushed Sutton Coldfield into a wider marketplace where its schools were seen as attractive to many families from poorer areas of Birmingham. We have seen that the first year of the new system caused considerable conflict, and Sutton Coldfield families were only pacified by the


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LEA allowing extra children to attend each of the five comprehensive schools. This change resulted in part from the activities of a pressure group — PANIC. The pressure group not only had a direct influence on local education policy but also (and perhaps more importantly) acted to resocialize Sutton Coldfield parents into appropriate behaviour in the changed circumstances. PANIC led Sutton Coldfield parents to recognize that if they wished to ensure their children attended a local school they needed to make their choices strategically. The formation and organization of PANIC required considerable knowledge and experience of the workings of local politics and bureaucracies. This type of cultural capital is more frequently found in the middle class than elsewhere. It also required financial capital. Being a small and centralized organization PANIC did not incur any great expenses, but there needed to be sufficient finance to cover costs which included legal advice. Entrepreneurial skill ensured that what funding was required was largely met by selling coffee and cakes at meetings for parents, having buckets available for donations, selling PANIC T-shirts

at £5 each and organizing raffles. By 1993 the residents of Sutton Coldfield were well aware of the changed situation. The interviews with parents showed that they made tactical decisions to ensure that their children attended a Sutton Coldfield school, even if it was not the one regarded as ideal. As the most popular schools were oversubscribed, it was often highly risky to choose any but the nearest school to the home. What happened here was that, far from 'selection by mortgage' decreasing in importance, it became of crucial importance. For popular schools, the effective catchment area shrank, so that the intake was likely to be even more socially homogeneous than before. Knowledgeable families from the 'poorer' areas of Sutton Coldfield dared not risk the possibility of rejection, so compromised on their own local school. In Sutton Coldfield the 1988 Education Reform Act's promises of 'greater choice' have proved to be a mirage. 'Selection by mortgage' is still the central allocative device.

CHAPTER 8

Parents' responses to the school

quasi-market*

Introduction Over the last fifteen years Britain has experienced a variety of changes in education policy that have been introduced and justified in terms of giving parents a greater choice of school. These changes include the introduction of the Assisted Places Scheme in 1980; the granting of greater opportunity for parents to 'express a preference' for particular state-maintained schools following the Education Acts of 1980 and 1981; the development of City Technology Colleges from 1986; the 1988 restructuring of the education system through grant-maintained schools, local management of schools and open enrolment; and the 1993 Act's even greater emphasis on choice and diversity. All of these policies have important implications for educational equity and have been the subject of a growing amount of research. The 1988 Education Reform Act dramatically changed the way in which children are provided with appropriate schools. It removed catchment areas, reduced the power of LEAs to control intakes to particular schools, and encouraged parents to believe that they would be given places for their children in the schools of their choice. The rhetoric was that of increased parental choice; the reality was often something different. As popular schools have become oversubscribed, they have been forced to select their pupils. This has been done either by reintroducing flexible catchment areas, or by using a range of criteria which may include interviews, aptitude tests and indications of student and parental motivation (Walford 1994a). The term 'quasi-market' best describes the current situation. It indi* Steven Carroll and Geoffrey Walford; first published in Research Papers in Education 12.1 (1997): 3-26.


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cates that the market forces introduced into schooling differ in some fundamental aspects from classical free markets both in respect of the demand and supply side. On the supply side, the institutions will not necessarily be privately owned or have profit maximization as their main objective. Further, entry of new suppliers is highly regulated and subject to strict controls. On the demand side, the 'purchaser' is not necessarily the 'consumer' of what schools offer and, more fundamentally, children realistically only have one chance of receiving basic education. If the wrong choice is made, the option to buy a different brand does not really exist. Moreover, the market forces introduced into schooling differ from those of the classical market in that the act of choosing transforms the product. Market forces in schooling lead to some schools becoming full while others are empty - a choice for a small school is made invalid if many others make the same choice. While schools form a 'quasi-market' rather than a classical market, there has been a growing concern that some families are able to 'play the market' more successfully than others. In particular, it has been argued by commentators such as Simon (1988) and Walford (1990) that a hierarchical system of schooling is likely to develop and that those children from disadvantaged groups may end up in schools with poor academic records and inadequate facilities. At the same time, those parents most able, knowledgeable and willing to 'play the system' are likely to be able to ensure entry for their children to the most prestigious and advantaged schools. The ways in which families choose schools and the workings of the educational quasi-market of schools have thus become significant research areas. In practice, the 1981 Education (Scotland) Act gave Scotland greater choice of school far earlier than England and Wales, so much of the early British research relates to Scotland. That Act was designed to introduce rights for parents to 'express a preference', but actually gave the local authorities less power to inhibit free choice than did the parallel Act for England and Wales. The result was that the Scottish experience after 1982 can be seen as a good indication of the possible effects of the free choice of school that was only introduced in England and Wales as a result of the 1988 Education Reform Act. The major large-scale study of the effects of the Education (Scotland) Act 1981 is that conducted by a group at the University of Edinburgh (Adler et al. 1989). This work was multifaceted but included a detailed study of the number and nature of requests made by parents for a school other than their catchment area school. While they found that families from all social classes made requests, the nature of the requests from different social groups varied. Many requests from working-class parents

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were from those living in poor housing estates who wished their children to attend a school in a more middle-class or mixed social class area. In contrast, there were few middle-class parents who wished their children to attend a working-class school. The authors argue that at the secondary level the legislation is leading to a widening of educational inequalities and producing a two-tier system where schools are generally perceived as desirable or undesirable. Well-motivated parents and children were able to opt out of local working-class schools because they saw them as undesirable, but by doing so they ensured that their judgement was likely to become a reality for those children who remained. Adler et al. (1989: 215) argue that, while the Act has led to the integration of a few pupils from areas of multiple deprivation into alternative schools, it has probably led to increased social segregation for those remaining in the local school. Their overall findings lead them to argue that the operation of greater parental choice might benefit some children but has acted to the detriment of children overall. This study, however, was based on a non-randomly selected series of case-studies rather than a true national sample, and is thus not truly generalizable. A national representative Scottish study of choice of school was conducted by a separate group at the Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh (Echols et al. 1990). Their study investigated the social class and parental education of a national cohort of young people who transferred to secondary school in 1982 — the first year of the new legislation. It included analysis of those who chose the private sector as well as those who chose an alternative school in the state-maintained sector. They found that the largest single effect on the incidence of choice was how close together schools were geographically. But they also found that it was the better-educated parents and those of higher social class who were more likely to have made a choice. The schools chosen tended to be those that had a higher social class intake and higher levels of attainment. The authors believe that the legislation on parental choice has increased social segregation between schools, and that the disproportionate gains in attainment made by children with parents who are manual workers, brought about by comprehensive education, are likely to be retarded or even reversed. Two more recent and detailed analyses by the same research group (Willms and Echols 1992; Echols and Willms 1995) draw upon a range of questionnaire and survey data and reinforce the earlier results. They found that high socioeconomic status families were more likely to exercise choice than those of lower socioeconomic status. Those who exercised choice were also likely to be more of higher socioeconomic status than those who sent their child to the designated school. Choosers


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tended to select schools with higher mean socioeconomic status and higher levels of attainment, but these differences in attainment were actually small once the differences in background characteristics of the pupils had been taken into account. These results suggest, once again, that the choice process is increasing between-school segregation, which may produce greater inequalities in attainment between social class groups. Since 1988 there have been a growing number of research projects outside Scotland into parental choice of school. In English and Welsh studies the focus has often been on the reasons for choosing a particular school, and it has been shown that parents often give greater value to 'process' rather than 'product' criteria (Elliott 1982). 'Process' criteria involve factors indicative of the capacity for human relationships such as the happiness of the child, whilst 'product' criteria refer to outcome such as examination results. Studies carried out by Alston (1985), Boulton and Coldron (1989), Woods (1992) and Webster et al. (1993) have all shown that 'parents are just as, if not more concerned with "process" issues than measured outcomes when choosing schools' (Webster et al. 1993: 18). Other studies reporting similar findings include those by Hunter (1991), West (1992a; 1992b) and David et al. (1994). Other research studies have focused more on the workings of the micro-market of schools. The studies by Ball and his colleagues have been particularly influential (Ball 1993a; Ball et al. 1995; Gewirtz et al. 1994). They interviewed a broad spectrum of parents who had recently decided which secondary school to send their child to, and examined in detail the ways in which various families responded to the market situation in which they found themselves. Ball argues that families are privileged or disadvantaged by the values that inform their conceptions of choice-making. Indeed, 'choice' is a socially and culturally constricted concept which has different meanings for different families. Government policy, he claims, is predicated on a consumerist vision that is most likely to be embraced by the middle class. Ball (1993a: 4) argues that 'the implementation of market reforms in education is essentially a class strategy which has as one of its major effects the reproduction of relative social class (and ethnic) advantages and disadvantages'. One of the major research aims of the current study was to investigate further the nature of the differences in the ways families from differing socioeconomic backgrounds 'used' choice mechanisms. We sought to add to understanding of the nature of inequalities in the educational marketplace that had been found by previous studies (Edwards et al. 1989; Echols et al. 1990; Ball et al. 1995). However, we were also concerned that there has been a tendency in previous research to approach choice from perspectives which fail to

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stress complexity. In their major Scottish study, for example, Adler et al. (1989) used a simple classification of 'choosers' and 'non-choosers', while Willms and Echols (1992) used the 'alert' and 'inert' terminology based on earlier work by Hirschman (1970). More recently, Ball (1993a) and Ball et al. (1995) have used the terminology of 'cosmopolitans' and 'locals' to describe the activities of two groups of families in their study of school choice. In a paper based upon interviews with sixteen families they argue: Despite the element of tautology we refer to those families who engage with the education market in this strategic fashion as 'cosmopolitans' and those who make a deliberate choice for their neighbourhood school as 'locals'. Empirically the former are likely to be middle class, but not all middle-class families are market strategists and some working-class families are. Equally, the 'locals' are typically working class, although there are one or two middle-class examples. Nonetheless exceptions are exceptions; the pattern of class-related orientations to choice in the whole data set is strong. Altogether middle-class 'choosers' are much more active in the education market place. (Ball et al. 1995) In another paper (Gewirtz et al. 1994), based upon a larger number of interviews, the same authors try to identify three broad groups or types of parents based upon two independent indicators of their 'position' in relation to the education marketplace. These two variables are seen as their 'inclination' and 'capacity' to exploit choice, and they give examples of 'privileged', 'frustrated' and 'disconnected' parents. The authors note that these classifications are not rigid, but there is still a tendency for such usage to hide some of the complexity of decision-making. A prime objective of the present research was to explore the ways in which families choose schools through in-depth interviews and to provide a qualitative description of the diversity and complexity of such decisionmaking and its relationship to social class. Thus the study was constructed such that it was possible to examine the reasons why parents choose and do not choose their local school, and whether these reasons differ between families of various social classes. The research was interested in the strategies parents employed in completing application forms and making multiple applications. An area for research was selected where parents had the opportunity to apply to schools in other LEAs. The question of the degree to which parents listen to the voice of their child is discussed elsewhere (Carroll and Walford, 1997b).


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Research methods The sample of parents for this study was drawn from two areas within an English Midlands city that were carefully selected to provide socioeconomic contrast. Both areas were situated within the same LEA, where the bulk of the children attended schools defined as comprehensive. In practice, in addition to the comprehensives, the LEA supported some highly selective grammar schools. Selection for these was through examinations for which parents had to enter their children. The first area (area A) from which the sample was drawn was within a prosperous suburb essentially serving as a commuter area for the city. The general area is characterized by a number of wealthy housing estates, particularly to the north where the sample was taken. The second sample was taken exclusively from a council-owned housing estate that was built during the 1960s to help house the rising population of the city. It has a number of prominent tower blocks surrounded by terraced housing. Small area statistics from the 1991 census were available for the two broad areas. At that point, area A had proportionately twice as many owner-occupied private households as area B, while area B had twelve times the percentage of local authority rented housing, eight times the percentage of housing without central heating, and three times the percentage of households without a car as area A. The unemployment figures were 5 per cent against 21 per cent. The sample of parents was taken from those having children at five primary schools, two in area A and three in area B. Both areas are similarly served by one main secondary school, and both areas bordered other education authorities. Once primary schools had been persuaded to help, envelopes containing an introductory letter and a stamped addressed reply envelope were posted to all the parents of children in Year 6 (i.e. those children about to transfer to secondary school). A number of the schools suggested giving the envelopes to the children to take home, thus saving the school's time in addressing them, and the researchers' expense of postage. In all these cases it was stressed that child distribution might affect response rates, and the schools agreed to the letters being posted. A compromise was reached with two schools whereby the children addressed the envelopes themselves, but the letters were still sent through the post. The intention was to interview 40 families, 20 from each of the two areas, and from two primary schools in each case. However, the response rates from area B were significantly lower than from area A, so a third school was included. Tables 8.1 and 8.2 show that, of the 185 families invited to help, 51 replied positively and 33 of the families were interviewed in-depth about their choice of secondary school. There were twenty interviews

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with parents from area A and thirteen with parents from area B. As some parents were interviewed as a couple, 45 parents were interviewed in total. The gender of the parents interviewed is shown in Table 8.3. Within area A twelve of the children were girls and eight were boys, while in area B four were girls and eight were boys. Table 8.1

Response rates for area A

Primary school

Letters posted

Total replies

Positive replies

Interviews

(1) (2) Total

58 42 100

33 18 51

26 12 38

14 6 20

Table 8.2

Response rates for area B

Primary school

Letters posted

Total replies

Positive replies

Interviews

(3) (4) (5) Total

30 25 30 85

7 8 7 22

5 4 4 13

5 4 3 12

Table 8.3

Interviewee characteristics

Base = 33

One female interviewee

One male interviewee

Both partners present

First area Second area Total

11 7 18

2 0 2

7 5 12

The response from area A was such that the quota of twenty families was easily filled. In deciding which families to interview it was decided to spread the interviews evenly between early and late replies. This ensured that if there were any differences between parents who replied quickly and those who replied late then both would be covered by the research. Two indications of socioeconomic status were obtained. First, the parents were asked their occupations in interview. Obtaining this information sometimes proved problematic, and it was not always possible to probe deeply. Secondly, and more reliably, data were collected on the council tax banding of the family home. This information was easily available from the central library and was a good guide to the market value of the house in April 1991. Council tax bands probably provide a good indication of the wealth of each family, and may well be a useful


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indicator of socioeconomic status in any future studies. Tables 8.4 and 8.5 show these measures revealed that while the sample from area B produced the expected low socioeconomic groupings, the sample from area A produced a somewhat broader range but one that generally suggests considerable wealth. Table 8.4

Socioeconomic characteristics of area A

Council tax band and associated value in pounds

Interview number and estimated social class

H > 320,000

(14)11

G < 320,000

(1)1 (5)1 (15) II (17)1

F < 160,000

(9)11 (13) II (16) HIM (18) II

E < 120,000

(19)11

D < 88,000

(4)11 (6) IIIN (10) HIM (11) HIM

C < 68,000

(R)(2)V (12) II (R) (20) IV (U) (3)IIIM(U) (7) IIIN (8)_IV

B < 52,000

Key (R) = Rented accommodation; (U) = Unemployed

Parents were contacted while their children were still attending primary school. This allowed parents' views to be assessed as closely as possible to the time when they had actually been involved in the decision-making process. They were interviewed from March to August 1993, the period directly after the announcement of secondary school places. This was not only the most practical and convenient time to interview parents but also ensured that all parents were at a similar point in the decision-making process. Interviews were chosen rather than questionnaires in order to build a detailed picture of how and why these parents had used legislation on choice.

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Table 8.5

Socioeconomic characteristics of area B

Council tax band and associated value in pounds

Interview number and estimated social class

B < 52,000

(22) HIM (32) IIIN

A < 40,000

(R) (21) HIM (R) (23) V (U) (R) (24) V (U) (R) (25) V (R) (26) V (U) (R) (27) IV (28) HIM (29) IIIN (R) (30) IV (R) (31) IIIN (U)

Key (R) = Rented accommodation; (U) = Unemployed

While the study attempted to sample a range of parents from differing socioeconomic backgrounds, no claim is being made that the sample is more representative or generalizable than previous research. Its strength is that it is a detailed case-study of choice in two neighbouring but contrasting areas. This depth allowed the study to examine aspects of the decisionmaking process which may not have been apparent in previous studies. The interview schedule used in the study drew ideas from the schedule used in work by Edwards et al. (1989) and that of Walford and Miller (1991). However, the schedule was only used as a guide. The interviews were as open, loosely structured and as friendly as possible. There were several alterations to the schedule including the addition of questions concerning popularity of schools, and how preferences were given. If the respondent felt more comfortable with a friend present, this was encouraged for the sake of rapport. This only occurred on two occasions (interview 2 and interview 29). A good rapport was maintained in almost all the interviews; this was particularly apparent in periods following the 'official' interview where an informal discussion about choice ensued. These exchanges were often most illuminating and revealing, and were frequently humorous. A tape recorder was used in all but two of the interviews. The recorded part of the interviews lasted between 40 and 70 minutes. In the presentation of results that follows, numbers in brackets after quotations refer to the numbers given to the interviews. Interviews 1—20 refer to the sample drawn from area A, while 21—32 refer to that from area B.


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Describing complex continua The most evident feature of the results from the 32 interviews was their complexity. Different families approached the decision-making process in a variety of ways, and their relationship to the process could not be easily described by grouping 'similar' cases together, as has been done in previous research studies. It was not even possible to see this variety in terms of a position along a single continuum - there were multiple dimensions of variation. Nevertheless, description and analysis are necessary, and it was decided to develop several criteria on which parents' responses to the quasi-market could be assessed. It was clear that some families had spent a lot of time thinking about choice, had visited many schools and had exploited the choice mechanisms available to them. We have described these responses as 'active' in terms of a number of different criteria. In contrast, the responses of other parents could be described as indicating a more 'passive' response to choice. After preliminary analysis of the interview results, two sets of criteria were constructed to act as indicators, and reflect the particular circumstances of the local micromarket. It must be stressed that this list of criteria was drawn from what we found to be the important features of the interview results. The criteria do not reflect the whole experience of choice, and families could be 'active' and 'passive' to different degrees on various elements. Nevertheless, the broad distinction could be used to give an indication of families' relationship with choice on these specified criteria. The criteria used to indicate an 'active' relationship with choice were as follows. 1. Family made an application for schooling in more than one LEA. 2. Family arranged an individual appointment to visit a potential secondary school. 3. Family moved house into an area which they perceived to be the effective catchment area of the desired secondary school. 4. More than one open day/evening was attended. (This does not include attending the same school more than once.) 5. Family was prepared to send the child to a secondary school at a long distance from the child's home. (This included journeys on public transport which involved two buses, or a bus/train followed by a long walk. It also included any journey judged to be over five miles in length.) 6. Family had made a strategic application to comprehensive schools. (Examples of strategic applications included families who

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7.

8. 9. 10.

listed three realistic non-local preferences in order to avoid the local comprehensive.) Family knew how the allocation system worked in practice. (This knowledge sometimes meant that parents did not express first preference for their most desired school because this was perceived, with some justification, to be too risky.) A grammar school application had been made. Family had paid for eleven plus tuition. Private education was a genuine consideration.

The criteria used to indicate a 'passive' response to choice were as follows: 1. Family believed there was no difference between schools. 2. Family believed that the child would achieve the same results irrespective of the school attended. (This is not the same as (1), as a number of these families believed there were real differences between schools.) 3. Family displayed poor strategic knowledge. (This included families who believed they had no chance of obtaining a place at a desired secondary school when in fact they had an excellent chance of a place if they expressed a first preference for the school.) 4. The grammar school form had not been seen or the application process was unknown. 5. A grammar school application was not considered due to the perceived prohibitive expense. 6. Families felt restricted in choice due to a reliance on public transport. 7. Family had submitted a flawed parental preference form. (For example this included families who only listed one school.) 8. Families had a poor opinion of the local school and still listed it as first preference. 9. No open days were attended. The interview data were set against the above list of nineteen criteria (ten 'active' and nine 'passive') and the results are shown in table 8.6 which shows the number of both active and passive criteria met by each family. The complexity of the responses to choice is immediately evident. The pattern is far from simple, with a substantial overlap of active and passive responses. Overall, there were more active criteria met than passive criteria. In the analysis that follows, a somewhat arbitrary decision was made such that where families had three or more 'active' responses they were defined as having an 'active' relationship to choice. Families


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with more 'passive' counts than 'active' ones were defined as 'passive'. The remainder were described as having an intermediate response to choice. Although having arbitrary elements, this division into three does allow us to indicate some of the complexity and variety in the ways that parents related to the quasi-market of schools. This division is not intended to indicate any sharp division between parents but is used here as an aid to the presentation and discussion of data. Table 8.6 'Passive' and 'active' choice criteria met by each family. (+ and - indicates an 'active' or 'passive' criterion met)

No. 1 5 16 19 18 11 15 13 29 6 17 31 12 3 14 4 32 20 26 10 25 28 9 7 2 8 22 27 30 24 21 23

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

+ve

-ve

8 7 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 5 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

1

1 1 2 1 2 4 1 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 2 2 4 4 6

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Families who were 'active' in the market The in-depth interviewing of 32 sets of parents revealed a wide range of parental responses to choice. Some parents, while being aware of the right to express preferences for non-local schools, saw little value in choice. Others, like those discussed here, saw the choice mechanism as an integral part of securing what they saw as the best education for their child. There were fourteen interviews where the respondents had been adept at exploiting choice; twelve of these interviews came from area A and 2 from area B. The interviews revealed that there are a number of relatively simple ways in which parents can increase their range of potential schools and improve their chances of obtaining a place at a preferred school. One strategy employed by all but one of the fourteen was to apply for a grammar school place. A less obvious tactic used by six respondents was to make applications to more than one LEA, with one respondent applying to three authorities as well as completing the grammar school application. A number of parents had also arranged individual appointments to go and look around the prospective schools; as Mrs (6) commented: 'Nearly all the schools are no hassle and if you're not sure you ring up and ask to go round it again.' The way parents completed their preference forms indicated awareness of choice parameters. In area A, where some schools were oversubscribed, parents were only assured of a place within the local area if their first preference was their nearest comprehensive. Without exception parents in area A named their local comprehensive as first preference, though many actually would have preferred another more distant school. In all these cases the parents were acting strategically and not through ignorance of choice mechanisms. Families in area B were in a different situation. The local comprehensive was undersubscribed and, consequently, parents were guaranteed a place there even if their three preferences were all for non-local schools. The two respondents from area B described here as 'active' took advantage of this and returned preference forms which did not list the local comprehensive. For example, Mrs (31) welcomed the chance to use her Catholicism to help ensure her child obtained a non-local school: 'Well, I was brought up Catholic, but I'm not really. I'm not terribly religious, it's only the fact that on the whole they do seem to be better schools.' It should be stressed that with both cases these parents believed it was very important to avoid a place at the local area B comprehensive. This set them apart from the other most 'active' parents who were not gener-


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ally unhappy with their local comprehensive but believed there were better schools available to them. None of these parents rejected their local area comprehensive as adamantly as Mrs (31) rejected hers: 'Because it's got a terrible reputation, because I've seen the children from there hanging around — and in the language and the behaviour, and they're just awful and it just seems more like a prison camp, I'd never have sent her there, I would have not sent her to school.' Such approaches to choosing a school rely on parental confidence to use the 'system' and on a tactical knowledge, which in a number of cases appears to have been the product of neighbourhood and social networks. One area A respondent (1) said of parents of children at her daughter's primary school: 'Oh yes! We discussed it! I think it was the only topic of conversation for the last year!' Mrs (5) commented: 'You get advice from people you know, from people whose children go to these schools, the literature that the schools produce themselves.' Mrs (6) said: 'I put my ear to the ground and get as many comments as I can all the way round to help me decide. And I think that is by far the best way because most people have a general idea what's good.' It is clear from all these 'active' area A respondents that neighbourhood informants are an important network in the choice process. In contrast, both area B respondents claimed few ties with their respective community said they did not rely on local information. Material resources can play an important part in the choice process. Of the twelve respondents making grammar school applications in this group, nine had paid for eleven plus tuition. This included Mrs (31), a single parent on income support from area B: 'I really desperately wanted her to go so I did pay for quite a few weeks, she started about nine months before she took the exam, doing it, because it was important to me that she went to a grammar school.' Of these nine, seven passed the examination but only four accepted their places at grammar school. It is clear that many of the parents were concerned with securing as many options as possible. Mrs (17) stressed this when she said: 'Actually that was why she took the grammar school exam, not because she wanted to go, it was really something to fall back on.' Mrs (5) was even clearer: 'I filled all the forms for all the various schools I wanted him to go to, and sent them all back, and in fact he got offered places at all the schools that he applied for. So then you have to reject the ones you decide not to have.' None of these parents shared the level of Mrs (31)'s determination but some did point to the social desirability of grammar school places. Mrs (16) said: 'When you have grammar schools and comprehensives you tend to think subconsciously that comprehensives are second best.' Mrs (5) was more specific: 'There is the snob element in all of this - it's

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actually very harrowing for parents — all this choice. And where you have selective schools there's almost like a stigma that if your child doesn't pass the exam . . . you can hear the mothers nattering on about where their child's going, it's all pretty ghastly really' Material resources also allow for private education, thus increasing the range of schools available. For example, one respondent was sending their child to private school and two others had given it genuine consideration. Material resources also allow some parents to move house nearer desirable secondary schools and therefore improve their chances of obtaining a place at that school. Four parents from area A had done exactly this. One of them, Mrs (3), was very clear as to her motivation for moving house: We could have gone elsewhere and bought a house that would have been more to our taste, if you like. That sounds a bit snobby, but this house wasn't exactly what we desired as a house, but to us the children's education was more important... to us the priority was to get as near to the school that we wanted as possible, especially because of the trouble that had happened last year with children not getting their choice of school . . . if we could have got a bit nearer we would have done. Mrs (18) commented: We moved into the area just over a year ago and knowing that he was going to have to go to secondary school I did the research beforehand and which is why we moved here . . . so in that sense I had some choice I suppose. Other people who either couldn't afford a house near the school or didn't take the necessary measures beforehand wouldn't have the choice. These 'active'parents, through a combination of cultural capital, material resources and motivation have exploited the choice system. As Mrs (18) put it: 'If you've got the system then you've got to try and work it. If the systems there you've got to try and do the best for your child.' One parent, Mr (15), claimed that some parents had dishonestly used the choice process: 'There are others who cheated and managed to get their kids in, like living in other parts of town and giving an address locally . . . We know who they are. There's been a certain level of cheating, not a lot, but it has happened.' Nevertheless, all these respondents were prepared to organize their households around the choice of secondary school and were overwhelmingly from the area A sample.


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Families who were 'passive' in the market Some of the parents interviewed were less adept at using choice legislation than others. The discussion here draws upon twelve in-depth interviews which demonstrate a more 'passive' response to choice; eight of these interviews came from area B and four from area A. Two of the four families from area A had undergone some trauma in the months leading up to the choice deadline. Another one of the interviews was with an ethnic minority couple who were disadvantaged because of their poor English language skills. Of the twelve interviews, none of these parents had made applications to other LEAs, and none had applied for a grammar school place. Four of area B respondents were unfamiliar with the selection process and reported not having seen the application form which should have been sent to every parent. For example, Mr (22) said, 'No. I haven't seen it to be quite honest', while Mr (21), commenting on the eleven plus examination, simply said, 'We were never asked to'. Mrs (7), from area A, was under the impression that an application to the grammar school would jeopardize their application to a comprehensive school. In completing the school preference form, all of these parents expressed a preference for the local comprehensive and successfully obtained a place there. Most had only ever considered the local school; two area B respondents listed only the one school and four others made additional non-local preferences which were arbitrarily based and could not be remembered at the time of interviewing. Some respondents believed there was little difference between schools. Mr (24) stated: 'I mean we consider them all to be, you know, similar really', and at the end of an interview dominated by her husband, a somewhat exasperated Mrs (21) retorted: 'I think all schools are the blinking same!' Other parents believed that their child would achieve the same results irrespective of the school attended. Mr (23), in response to his wife, commented: 'I said to her if your child wants to do good they'll do good anyway - you could send them to a real good school, and if they don't want to know they're not going to learn are they?' While Mrs (28) said: 'I think they all learn the same. I think they all learn the same anyway whether you go to a grammar school or a comprehensive, I think it's how the child is itself.' Mr (21) argued the local council estate school was essentially a good school let down by a number of its pupils: 'My children went to [the] comp so I know the reputation, I know it's got a bad name at the moment. But it's only got a bad name inasmuch as its children that go there don't want to learn. . . . It doesn't matter what school you send

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them to, they still wouldn't learn, they're not interested.' Mrs (22) said: 'They say it's a very good school. If you want to learn, they'll teach you.' As previously stated, the local area B comprehensive is undersubscribed, which means if all three parental preferences are unsuccessful, residents are still guaranteed a place at their local school. Parents could thus 'risk' an application to a desired school at some distance. Five sets of parents genuinely desired non-local schools but still listed the local school as first preference. In each case they chose the local school through a mixture of poor tactical knowledge and deference to the child's wishes. For example, Mrs (25) commented: When I was choosing the schools for [son], when I was looking at them, my first choice would have been [school Q] which I listed as second. The only reason we put [the local comprehensive] down was because [of. . . son] because he's quiet and shy, all his friends was going there, that's why he didn't want to go somewhere on his own. The 'passive' parents in area B appeared to be less influenced by neighbourhood and social networks than other parents. Independence was valued. For example, Mr (21) commented: 'We make our own decisions, some of them are wrong but we make them! We had the booklet through . . . we went straight up to the school and registered [son] there — sorry, we had a look round and then registered him there, we just wanted to make sure it hadn't deteriorated as much as we had been told that it had.' The (22)s also argued that they had made their own decision, without being influenced by anybody. Mrs (22) claimed: 'We don't know a lot about the schools, you see.'Mrs (23) complained: 'Well, all I heard about was a couple of open days at a couple of school, and that was it. If you want to go, then go. There weren't nothing else, you know, you've just got to inform the schools on which one you'd want to choose, that was it really' Mrs (24) desired more information: 'I think we'd have liked to have known from other different schools what they was doing and the kind of things they was into.' This lack of a neighbourhood network to provide information on choice differentiated these parents from the area A parents judged as having a 'passive' response. Mrs (8) remarked: 'I just chat to people really. I know someone who's at university at the moment and he went there. I just generally listened to what other people said about it.' Obviously, the lack of material resources can be a disadvantage when choosing a school. Four respondents mentioned a frustration with a reliance on public transport, but this was mostly expressed as a concern with safety rather than a monetary worry. Mrs (8) from area A had only considered the local comprehensive: 'I'm just thinking of like distance for


129

travelling and that you know . . . The girls' school? That one seemed a nice school, but it's a bit far out for her to travel, travelling on her own.' Mrs (25) had considered a number of other choices: 'One of my main worries about him going to the other two choices was he'd have to travel on the bus.' She had withdrawn her older daughter from a non-local comprehensive because of her anxieties: 'The only reason that she went to [the local comprehensive] afterwards was because it was the journey; the one night she didn't get back till after half past five, and it really worried me, and she said somebody was pestering her at the bus stop.' Mrs (23) agreed: 'It's the buses and that, there are so many kids been took and I'd just rather know she's on here - you know what I mean? . . . I mean buses and that, there's so many "pervs" around these days, I'd be worried sick.' These interviews demonstrate that choice is a complex issue. Some of these parents, while being aware of the ability to choose, see little value in choice; they feel frustrated by a reliance on public transport, or they lack strategic knowledge of how the allocation system works. But their 'passive' response did not necessarily indicate that they attached little importance to education. Their attitudes towards education varied. While some parents would agree with Mrs (21) in stating 'I've never sat any exams and I've gone through my life without any trouble', other parents were just as likely to express concern. Mr (24) remarked that education is 'Very important these days, they seem to be picking the people with the best of the brains for the job - for even the lowest kind of job', while Mr (22) believed 'People have got to have education now to stand a chance.'

Families who had an intermediate response to the market Within the complexity and diversity of responses there were six families whose relationship towards the market displayed a variety of both 'active' and 'passive' elements. Most of these parents had used choice in some ways, but had been frustrated or inactive in others. There are no typical examples. Mr (14) had played the system in part by paying for private tuition for the grammar school exam. He was also prepared to send his child over ten miles to the desired secondary school. However, he had made little or no contact with the closest secondary school, which lay on the other side of the LEA boundary: 'Well, we never got anything from anywhere else . . . If you were pushing the [LEA] schools to us, we certainly never really received any information, brochures or literature

130


of any kind from anybody about our son . . . unless you actually went to the school . . . nobody was after grabbing him for their school.' He appeared to have made a conscious decision not to seek out information about schools: We know some parents fairly close to here. They went to every open night in the area, I think both them and their child got totally overwhelmed, and they couldn't make any decision at the end of the day . . . they saw too many, and we didn't want to be in that position so we said we would go to the catchment area schools, if [son] didn't like it then we would go elsewhere. Mrs (26) was a parent from area B who displayed some 'active' responses to choice and, like the other examples, was motivated by a rejection of the local comprehensive: Well I went there, and I came out with no education — I know it's not the school's fault, but then it was quite strict when I was there and I was still able to walk in one door and straight out the other, and now it's supposed to have gone really laxydazy — so I don't want him to do exactly what me and his dad did. I want him to come out with an education. She played the allocation system strategically by not listing the estate comprehensive as any of her preferences. She was successful in obtaining her second preference, with which she was happy, though she had wanted a grammar school place. She felt frustrated financially: 'Really it's money-wise as well because with grammar schools you'll find that you'll need one hell of a lot of extra stuff for a grammar school than you would for an ordinary comprehensive. It's a shame really that your child's education should have to go to pot because of money-wise.' However, it was also clear that she had little knowledge of the grammar school allocation procedure. When asked if her child had taken the eleven plus exam she was not sure: 'No. I don't know anything about it actually — unless he had it last Wednesday when he went [the child had recently visited his prospective secondary school]?' Mrs (20) from area A, whose child had sat the eleven plus examination, had wanted a non-local comprehensive. She felt frustrated by the dangers of non-local choice but also by her reliance on public transport: 'it's two minutes [from the local school] - they don't have to leave till half-past eight whereas like, it would be more like ten to eight, quarter to eight if she had to go to [another school], and then it's the bad weather, and if the buses go on strike, you've got to take that into consideration when it's so far away.' In contrast, Mrs (32) had no qualms


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about public transport: 'travelling wasn't an important factor, I would have been prepared to send [son] much further afield'. As it was, the child would be catching two buses on an hour-long journey. However she displayed poor strategic knowledge of the allocation system. She had listed the school of her choice as first and second preference, despite knowing it was a popular school and that she lived on the edge of its effective catchment area: 'That's what everyone else did so I just - a bit like a sheep - I thought if I put three schools, chances are I might get the third one which I hadn't decided on.

Discussion The results from 32 interviews demonstrate the diversity and complexity of choice strategies. The results have been presented to contrast parents who had shown more 'active' responses with parents who had generally been 'passive', whilst acknowledging that there were a number of parents who showed a diversity of responses. There is no suggestion here that the research has identified 'groups' or 'types' of parent. Indeed, parents were only separated according to how their responses to choice related to a set of nineteen criteria. There were no clear-cut obvious groupings but a range of complex and sometimes idiosyncratic responses. The previous research on school choice has failed to stress complexity. We were unable to analyse these data in terms of any simple classification into 'choosers' and 'non-choosers' (Adler et al. 1989), 'alert' and 'inert' (Willms and Echols 1992), 'cosmopolitans' and 'locals' (Ball 1993a; Ball et al. 1995) or 'privileged', 'frustrated' and 'disconnected' (Gewirtz et al. 1994). The authors note that these classifications are not rigid, but there is still a tendency to simplify the complexity of decision-making beyond what was found to be justifiable in the present study. Differences in interpretation may, of course, be due to different samples of parents studied in the research, but we did not find these straightforward categories particularly useful in understanding the activities of parents in this study. We have discussed a complex continuum of different responses to the market rather than a set of groups, for we found no significant 'gaps' or 'clusters' within the data set which would have suggested some meaningful groupings. Indeed, a case could be made for multidimensional continua which would represent a variety of approaches to choice. In some families the parents had chosen the school; in others it was the child's choice and there were examples of parents facilitating the child's choice and of the existence of a decision-making team. The results from this research stress the complexity of choice and suggest that interaction

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with choice in the quasi-market of schools might be better represented by a series of continua than by groupings. One of the major research aims was to investigate whether there were differences in the way families from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds 'used' choice mechanisms. A number of previous studies have found that there are inequalities in the educational marketplace, with middle-class families being more able and inclined to use choice legislation than working-class families (Edwards et al. 1989, Echols et al. 1990; and Balled/. 1995). The results from this study give further support to this finding, but suggest that care should be taken about generalization. The present study relies on information gained from just 32 interviews and the method of selection means that significance tests are not fully appropriate. However, the distribution of responses to choice based on the nineteen criteria against socioeconomic group indicates an overall significance at better than the 1 per cent level. It is immediately obvious that, in this study, families towards the 'active' end of the continuum came mostly from social class I to IIIN and lived in houses which tended to be valued within council tax bands D-G (see Table 8.7), while families towards the 'passive' end of the continuum were predominantly from the HIM to V social classes and lived in tax bands A—C. However, whereas previous studies have tended to describe 'active' working-class families as exceptions, this study found a significant number of families of low socioeconomic status who had actively engaged choice mechanisms. Four of the sixteen most 'active' families lived in accommodation valued within the A—C council tax bands and had estimated social class estimates ranging from II to IV. Also three of the six families in the middle of the continuum (those making both 'active' and 'passive' responses to choice), lived in houses within the A—C council tax bands and had social class estimates between IIIN and V. There was, however, more consistency concerning the socioeconomic characteristics of families to the 'passive' end of the continuum. Eleven of the twelve least 'active' families lived in accommodation valued within the A—C council tax bands, and had social class estimates varying from IIIN to V. The interviews demonstrated that material resources can help families to expand or improve the choices available to them. Private education was a genuine consideration for three families in the study, and the chances of obtaining a grammar school place were improved by a number of families employing a tutor for the eleven plus examination. Material resources also helped some families to move house into the effective catchment area of a desired school; others were able to afford long journeys on public transport, or to have access to a private car. All

STUDYING SCHOOL CHOICE Table 8.7

Council tax band (jQ

'Active' and 'passive' responses to choice

Families who made an 'active' response

H >320,000

Families who made an intermediate response

Families who made a 'passive' response

(14) II

G

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