Latest education reforms have once again raised the question of selection. However, the government, who remain adamant that changes in education policy in no way reinstate selection, are not the ones raising this issue. Despite New Labour’s egalitarian rhetoric, many feel that granting new autonomy to schools will lead to a steep rise in the unofficial selection already occurring today. The education minister, Ruth Kelly, and the Prime Minister, however, insist that schools’ new freedoms, including independence from LEAs, will not denote powers to select pupils.
Whatever the ideology behind the government’s education policy, the fact is that the existing imbalance between supply and demand means that some form of selection is inevitable. A report published last week by the Evening Standard highlights the extent of the demand/supply disparity in London’s secondary schools. According to the report, in the capital’s best secondary schools pupils’ chances of securing a place are as low as 1 in 10, and for most popular schools, there are two applicants per space. In 11 of London’s most popular schools, the survey found that there were on average 6 applicants per place. The survey’s central illustration of the surplus demand problem was the case of Haberdashers' Aske’s Hatcham College, which had 2000 applicants for just 180 places.
The result of a system where only a handful of schools can be judged ‘good’ is that informal selection creeps in, in a number of ways. One effect has been the notorious inflation of house prices in particular regions as parents move to the catchment areas of popular schools. Rather more sinister is the evidence showing parents deceiving schools about their addresses, and extensive examples of schools informally selecting pupils on the basis of socio-economic class. Ultimately over-subscription necessitates schools to pick and choose, with the middle classes best at maximising their chances of being chosen. The fact that just 3% of pupils in the country’s top schools are eligible for free school meals (i.e. come from poor families) demonstrates not just the relationship between achievement and socio-economic class, but the limited access even the brightest poor children have to good schools.
In response to the new reforms one ‘rebel’ Labour MP, David Claytor, warned:
“We could find ourselves in a hierarchical, segregated system…” But arguably it’s not a segregated system per se that we want to avoid; it is the nature and mechanisms of this segregation which we need to be wary about. By purporting education provision based on non-selective egalitarianism, room is made for harmful and unfair unofficial selection which simply thwarts meritocracy. By standing staunchly against any forms of planned selection, yet allowing schools to select covertly, the DfES is creating a school system dominated by middle-class privilege. Token parity of esteem under New Labour is therefore more likely to hinder socio-economic mobility and maintain pockets of ghettoised underachievement than a system based on selective admissions.