London, UK - Faith schools and academies should be stripped of their power to choose pupils, according to research that suggests that some secondary schools are flouting new rules designed to prevent middle-class pupils dominating the best comprehensives.
Researchers at the London School of Economics, who studied more than 3,000 secondary school admission forms for 2008, said that faith schools and other establishments that control admissions, including academies, should hand over the job of allocating places to an independent body to ensure greater fairness. Anne West, director of the education research group at the LSE and lead author of the study, said that this could be the local authority, which already controls admissions for community schools, or a religious body such as the diocesan authority.
The researchers found that some schools were operating a form of backdoor selection by asking for personal information about parents’ marital status, occupation and educational background and even children’s hobbies. It also found that a significant minority of nonselective schools – 5 per cent – were selecting pupils on the basis of aptitude for a particular subject.
More than half a million 11-year-olds in England will discover this week whether they have got a place at their preferred secondary. Early indications suggest that nationally up to a sixth of children, more than 90,000 pupils, could be disappointed.
An overall decline in the number of applications means that the proportion of those failing to get their first choice is likely to fall slightly.
The Times has conducted a survey of 65 local authorities. The proportion of pupils not getting their first choice in the West London borough of Kensington and Chelsea was 40 per cent. Further west in Hillingdon the proportion was 29.5 per cent. In Hertfordshire the figure was 33 per cent, in Bournemouth 29 per cent and in Bristol 19 per cent.
In the grammar school areas of Kent and Buckinghamshire, the proportions were 21.5 and 46.05 per cent respectively.
Professor West said that despite the introduction of an admissions code in 2007 to outlaw backdoor selection several schools had breached the rules in letter and in spirit.
The study, which was funded by the education charity RISE and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, found that some schools were using supplementary information forms to ask parents open-ended questions, which would indicate a great deal about the parents’ own educational and social background.
Several schools asked about children’s hobbies and one even asked children to complete a 100-word statement. Another invited parents to meet the headteacher or deputy “to discuss the application for admission”, despite a ban on interviews.
A small number of grammar schools (15 per cent) asked about parents’ marital status through indirect questions, which is also against the rules.
The sheer complexity of admissions procedures discriminated against certain groups of parents, the report suggests. More than a fifth of voluntary aided schools have at least four admissions criteria relating to religion and some have as many as 11.
Closely tied to this, Professor West said, was the wide degree of discretion open to schools that controlled their own admissions. “Schools that are their own admission authority are in theory in a position to ‘cream skim’. This means that they are able, if they so wish, to select pupils who will maximise their examination league table results,” she said. “We do not know what is going on behind closed doors. We do not know what happens in voluntary aided schools and how it is decided whether or not a particular applicant is offered a place.”
The study found that the proportion of secondary schools selecting pupils by aptitude had risen from 3 per cent to 5 per cent between 2001 and 2008.
Nonselective schools that special-ise in specific subject areas may select up to 10 per cent of their intake by aptitude. The LSE study found that some schools used prior attainment, for example in music examinations, as an indicator of aptitude. This, Professor West suggested, was tantamount to selecting by ability.
Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the Schools Minister, said that the LSE report supported the Government’s own tough approach to the admissions code. “Admissions authorities must ensure their arrangements are not unnecessarily complex so as to disadvantage certain families,” she said.
Faith authorities were highly critical of the report. The Rev Janina Ains-worth, chief education officer for the Church of England, said that the study was based on out-of-date information and denied that the procedures for deciding a child’s religious affiliation were complex or that schools had too much discretionary power.
“Church attendance is the only measure our schools use when allocating places on the basis of faith, and you cannot get a much simpler way of assessing whether someone has a faith commitment or not,” she said.
Parents’ marital status is scrutinised
— The admissions code bans interviews, but one Roman Catholic school said: “Parents may be invited to the school by mutually convenient appointment to meet the headteacher or deputy head so that they can discuss the application for admission”
— A small number of faith schools asked direct questions about parents’ marital status (four) or financial status (two). Eight schools asked about parents’ occupations
— Less than a quarter of schools (23 per cent) asked indirect questions to determine parents’ marital status by asking for the address of both of the child’s parents or carers and whether the parent had access to the child
— The code states that schools should not use supplementary forms to ask about children’s hobbies but 15 schools with specialist status did just that. One faith school specialising in music, dance and drama asked about performances the child had been involved in
— Specialist schools may select 10 per cent of their intake on aptitude. One foundation school asked about pupil ability by requesting information on children’s attainment in specialist areas, such as music exams. It was among 17 to do so
Source: Secondary school admissions in England: policy and practice, LSE/RISE