A plan to crack down on parents lying about
their home or religious circumstances as a way of gaining an advantage in
schools admission has attracted the predictable response that ‘there should be
more good schools’ rather than fairer admissions rules. And an inquiry into
school lotteries – predictably – is likely to endorse their continued use.

Of course, those who raise the mantra about
good schools – like the indefatigable Sheila Lawlor on Today this morning – don’t
bother to look at what’s actually been happening in schools over the last
decade or so. There are twice as many comprehensives where 70% or more pupils
achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths, and the number where fewer
than 30% do so has fallen from 1600 – half of all secondaries in 1997 – to
around 250 today.

But even if the numbers of top performing
schools are doubled again and no school gets below the 30% benchmark – which
should be the minimum expectation for the next phase of school reform, although
the Tories are curiously unwilling to explain what outcomes they expect from
their proposed changes – there will still be some schools that are more popular
than others. Anyone suggesting otherwise is talking rot.

So, the issue is then: what is the fairest
way to allocate places where a school has more applicants than places? Good
schools are encouraged to expand, but are often reluctant to do so. The number
of academies, which are typically very popular with parents, is expanding
rapidly. But a system will still be needed that is fair.

Since both major parties now eschew
selection (apart from a limited 10% on aptitude in a handful of subjects) this
boils down to a question of whether proximity to a school should trump most
other criteria? For primaries, it makes sense to use this. But for urban
secondaries, it does not, as the arbitrariness of distance simply drives up
house prices and places some schools out of reach on financial grounds. It is
fairer to use either banding or a lottery (random allocation).

But that is not enough in itself. There must also be a network of
community activists trained to help less articulate parents to be as pushy as
their middle class counterparts. Such choice advisers should not be local
authority bureaucrats, but part-timers from the communities that need support,
with credibility in those communities but the knowledge to understand the best
choices for individual pupils. And the changes introduced in 2008 (following
the 2006 Act), where free school transport is now linked to choice, should be
extended and much better publicised so that there is subsidised transport
available to a choice of schools within a reasonable distance of one’s home. To
pretend that choice will emerge simply because new providers are allowed is not
enough. There must be active support to enable people to exercise those
choice.

This article was orginally published on Conor Ryan’s blog.