Stories + Views
Let’s have ‘no excuses’ on admissions, for a change.
One of the interesting things about education debate is about how certain issues come to the fore, then fade and then rise in prominence again. To take but two of these – the question of admissions policy, and the relationship between private and public education-; both have resurfaced in an excellent piece by Ron Glatter in the Guardian this week.
Using international evidence – so beloved, albeit in highly selective fashion, by our education secretary – Glatter reminds us of the importance of social mix in raising, or depressing, performance; a fact which seriously undermines the punitive ‘no excuses’ culture that has ruled educational rhetoric since the Coalition took power. The reason that ‘no excuses’ is so popular with the Tories, in particular, is that it leads to no significant structural change ( or not in favour of greater equality) and a mass of punishment of hard working teachers. It also gives the private schools an ideologically gilded role in the entire schema by suggesting that they provide a key template for publicly funded school improvement.
We have one of the most unequal school systems in the world. And, as Glatter points out, private education in the UK acts as a serious stumbling block to creating a high quality public education system. Why? Quite simply, it creams off the wealthy and relatively wealthy; gives them superior resources – and then uses their results to beat over the head schools in far poorer communities working with far few resource.
And yet – as Glatter points out with devastating precision, ‘ when account has been taken of the socio-economic background of pupils, state schools in the UK outperform private schools by a considerable margin. In fact the gap here is much greater than across the OECD as a whole where state schools have only a slight performance advantage over private schools.’
Glatter continues, ‘ If politicians were serious about their oft-stated concern for the poor – and their claim to want to match the world’s best – they would do more to ensure that there is a better mix of pupils within schools, which the OECD has consistently urged. It has found that increasing the social mix within schools boosts the performance of disadvantaged students without any apparent negative effect on overall performance.’
Of course, this is one aim that fairer admissions policies tried to consolidate; a set of initiatives, however, that has juddered to a halt – indeed, gone backwards – under this government, with de facto abolition of local admissions forums, sneaky changes to the admissions code, and of course, the introduction of a host of autonomous ‘independent’ schools that can, in many cases, covertly select, in order to improve the socio economic quality of their intake.
Any government serious about improving publicly funded education needs to tackle the fair admissions question and, at the very least, stop promoting private education as a template for anything in the public realm. It is not.
Incidentally, I think we should talk less about ‘state schools/state education’ and advocate, instead, high quality public education – for that is what we are after. It would also throw a fresh, inquiring light on the long entrenched use of the term ‘public schools’ for those educational institutions closed to any but the wealthy. For surely, the one thing they are not is ‘public.’
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admissions private schools, balanced intakes, International comparisons, Ron Glatter, The GuardianRelated posts
Comments, replies and queries
Reply
Melissa
In many areas, having a socially balanced intake requires a school to maintain the confidence of the middle-class. They are, after all, the ones most able to leave public education or move to the catchment area of a school they do trust.
When the WLFS was found to have 25% FSM, Toby Young faced criticism here at LSN. Yet, isn’t that level pretyy much the maximum any school should have if it is to meet the OECD ideal? I don’t have any figures for how socially balanced the WLFS intake is, or what the precise mix of middle-class, working-class-in-work, those on benefits etc is, but it does give the impression of having a healthier social mix than many community schools.
“In many areas, having a socially balanced intake requires a school to maintain the confidence of the middle-class.”
Absolutely – that’s a key insight.
One of the most important indicators for this is the nature of the top sets in key subjects. If they are in good shape and the students there are thriving and have like-minded friends then the middle class parents usually stay happy and confident.
If there are suddenly not enough very able students to maintain proper top sets then thing start to implode very fast.
One of the key Labour intervention tactics to prevent the genesis of sink schools was the scheme called ‘Excellence Cluster Funding’. This was specific small amounts of money provided to schools in danger of becoming sink schools to allow them to have smaller top sets so that they could preserve the quality of what went on in them. It was highly effective in keeping the supportive middle class parents and their children happy and keeping them at those schools. If there are no decent top sets how can the kids form disadvantaged backgrounds every do really well?
This government doesn’t seem to care less about any of this. They’re just obsessed with the success of a tiny handful of school and are quite happy to let the vast majority go to the dogs as this will serve to emphasise how wonderful their pet ‘free schools’ are.
One of the most important indicators for this is the nature of the top sets in key subjects.
So, are you telling me that all those arguments against setting & streaming and in favour of mixed ability teaching we’ve had from progressives over the years were wrong? Progress!
This government doesn’t seem to care less about any of this. They’re .. are quite happy to let the vast majority go to the dogs as this will serve to emphasise how wonderful their pet ‘free schools’ are.
Absurdly wrong. The free schools programme occupies a tiny proportion of ministerial concern and budget. Have all this government’s attempts to encourage school improvement through Ofsted, the academies programme, raising the standards of entrants to the profession, and its unrelenting focus on quality of teaching entirely passed you by?
“So, are you telling me that all those arguments against setting & streaming and in favour of mixed ability teaching we’ve had from progressives over the years were wrong? Progress!”
Some people are still stuck in the debate which raged when comprehensives were first created about setting v mixed ability. Most who actually teach moved on long ago and work on complex mixed of provision. I don’t exactly conceal my views on this topic Ricky: here they are – starting with this blog and continuing in series.
If you’re going to try to engage on this topic please at least to try to begin to get your bearings with it.
“Have all this government’s attempts to encourage school improvement through Ofsted, the academies programme, raising the standards of entrants to the profession, and its unrelenting focus on quality of teaching entirely passed you by?”
Er, no Ricky. They hadn’t. But at the end of the day nobody cares if Gove had some well intentioned but obviously ludicrous schemes which he through would improve things because he was too inexperienced to see the wood from the trees. They care about what actually happens to their kids and their schools.
But here at LSN people keep saying that our schools are pretty good already and getting better. You say they are “going to the dogs”. Which is it?
I am saying that if teachers are getting our most challenging teenagers through their most difficult years and out into employment with reasonable qualifications then they are doing a good job.
I’m also describing a bit about the reality of the kinds of kids these teachers are dealing with in classes of 30.
Talking about reality is different from saying schools are “going to the dogs”. Secondary schools in tough areas used to be far worse that this. Huge numbers of kids came out with no qualifications and no prospects.
I don’t think you have a clue how bad things used to be Ricky so when you hear a teacher say – “It’s awful – I’ve got classes I can’t teach last think on a Wednesday at all and a kid threw a chair at me” you think the world has suddenly fallen apart because you don’t know how much worse it used to be.
Talking about reality is code for making excuses.
Check out Dylan Winter’s speech to the SSAT conference 2010 (sorry haven’t a link) -
* In the classrooms of the best teachers, disadvantaged children learn as much as those from advantaged backgrounds.
* In the classrooms of the best teachers, students with behavioural difficulties learn as much as those without.
It’s a lot more complicated than that Ricky.
More than anything students need role models and self belief. Teachers do a great deal but they themselves are not enough when a cohort does not have access to external veins of inspiration and motivation.
Parents are crucial. Where parents and wider family role models are absent the next best things is peer inspiration. If you dilute kids from severely disadvantaged backgrounds suffiicently among aspirational children their disadvantage almost disappears.
But when you’ve got dense populations of students from backgrounds where they lack aspiration it’s very different. Yes you can create incredible learning environments, yes they will learn, but it’s damn hard to get them to learn precisely want you want them to learn because they don’t have the focus or the perception of the relevance of traditional routes to them.
I was chatting with somebody who worked with Sir Michael yesterday and she told me that he understood this precisely and worked avidly and actively to ensure he recruited plently of Asian and Pacific Rim students and lots of children from aspirational and educated refugee backgrounds to ensure he sufficiently diluted his population of students from less aspirational backgrounds. You see the same thing going at 6th form level with the rowers. Most schools just can’t do that, both because they haven’t got the rivers of cash from Europe that he’s had access to throughout his career and because the more aspirational families simply don’t exist in their area.
Issues raised by the ‘viewing the UK School system through the prism of PISA’ note referred to by Ron Glatter:
http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/33/8/46624007.pdf
are many and varied.
However Glatter’s Guardian piece quotes rather selectively from the PISA document.
Given the fact that we have recently experienced a sustained period of massive immigration into this country, within that context, the PISA comments in fact seem undramatic, if not a statement of the blindingly obvious:
‘In other words, in the United Kingdom two students from a different socio-economic background vary as much in their learning outcomes as is normally the case in the typical OECD country and more so than in Canada or Japan.’
PISA contrasts the UK’s socio-economic background/relationship with learning outcome performance unfavourably with Canada and Japan
Glatter also makes this contrast with reference to Finland.
Finland is one of the most ethnically and racially homogeneous countries in Europe.
Japan has a similarly uniform population.
‘Most observers characterize Japan as ethnically and racially homogeneous. Although there is an immigrant population as well as a minority Korean population, Japan is not typically considered a country of immigration or diversity.’
http://www.queensu.ca/mcp/immigrant/evidence/Japan.html
Whereas Canada has concentrated on attracting migrants of high educational attainment.
‘The increased focus on attracting university graduates to Canada resulted in a significant rise in the supply of such immigrants to Canada…..Between 1991 and 2006, the number of university-educated new immigrants aged 25 to 54 rose from around 84,350 to 298,000 in Canada (a 253% increase)……
In addition, Canada experienced a major shift away from European countries in favour of Asian countries as a source of university-educated immigrants. For example, in 1981 Canada, 39% of new (i.e., entering between 1976 and 1980) university-educated men came from Asia; this figure had increased to 61% by 2006.’
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11f0019m/2011329/part-partie1-eng.htm
Thus the performance of the state sector in the United Kingdom could be said to have stood up well to the strains recently placed on it, as the above article suggests.
There seems to be a general misapprehension amongst fans of the pre 2010 state educational status quo that parents are focused on the simplistic measurement of academic attainment. On that (not entirely consistent) measure, many state schools appear have stood up rather well over the last decade or so.
But the point is that parents in many parts of the country are dissatisfied with their local schools. Hence the reforms initiated by the coalition government.
Many parents, rightly, want more than just academic attainment for their children.
They want their children to emerge happy, motivated, fulfilled from their schools and thus employable. Three ‘A’ levels at A grade is only one fairly narrow measurement of outcome. Employers often reported, under the previous government that recruiting suitably skilled school leavers was problematic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEWoegEIo9s
http://www.norfolkunites.org.uk/media/pdf/ese.pdf
Often, that is why parents make great financial sacrifices to send their children to (let us call them) private schools.
That is also why the coalition government is trying to provide more autonomy for schools, in the belief that offering parents and their offspring more choice will enhance educational standards generally.
Please, sweeping statements such as:
‘use of the term ‘public schools’ for those educational institutions closed to any but the wealthy.’
let down the many interesting points that the above piece makes.
In actual fact, the wealthy have a number of different educational options for their children, often related to their ability to buy property adjacent to fine free schooling such as, for example, in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea:
‘ Holland Park – the one-time flagship of comprehensive education, once known as “the socialist Eton”,’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/27/holland-park-comprehensive-academy-status
Tim, you are correct in saying that exam results are a narrow measure of a school’s success (OECD has warned about the excessive emphasis on raw grades in England in its Economic Survey of the UK 2011). You are also correct in saying that “many parents, rightly, want more than just academic attainment for their children” although the present trend towards “Tiger” parenting would appear to contradict this.
You also imply that autonomy is a factor in school improvement. Again, you are correct, but UK schools already had considerable autonomy in 2009 according to research done during the PISA tests (see FAQs above). It is disingenuous of the Government to suggest that schools will only gain autonomy if they become academies – autonomy was already there except for a small amount (backroom support, mainly) provided by local authorities.
You also say that government policies will provide parents with more choice (in cities, maybe, it doesn’t work in small towns or in the countryside). However, the evidence linking educational outcomes with user choice is mixed (see FAQs above).
“UK schools already had considerable autonomy in 2009 according to research done during the PISA tests (see FAQs above).”!!!!!
Please could you explain the detail of that claim Janet?
Janet,
Thanks. Nice to get a reasonable report. Not a regular event during my school days.
In summary, parents don’t, as a rule, read PISA reports.
Most don’t read ‘The Guardian’.
Glatter’s article in ‘The Guardian’:
‘Increasing the social mix in schools is the way to close performance gaps
Ministers should return to comprehensive ideals if they are serious about concern for the poor – and Britain’s global ranking’
is a long way from addressing the educational concerns of parents.
Most simply are not interested in measures affecting the ‘social mix’ of schools or ‘comprehensive ideals’
They want practical measures to enhance their children’s life chances, focused on curricula and extra curricular opportunities.
There is a widespread belief that schools and teaching staff, given autonomy and more autonomy, will blossom, move off into different areas of excellence, and thus offer a better chance for most pupils to find an education better tailored to their individual needs.
That belief may very well be erroneous but it’s intuitively held and is unlikely to go away until and unless a massive change in perception takes place.
“There is a widespread belief that schools and teaching staff, given autonomy and more autonomy, will blossom, move off into different areas of excellence, and thus offer a better chance for most pupils to find an education better tailored to their individual needs.
That belief may very well be erroneous but it’s intuitively held and is unlikely to go away until and unless a massive change in perception takes place.”
What’s needed is appropriate professional autonomy with accountability. That’s what well designed systems of inspection and regulation encourage. Modern ICT systems are making it possible to properly track and facilitate student progress on core knowledge and techniques while still allowing a degree of professional independence and diversity which was not possible 10 years ago. But current systems and policy are preventing such intelligent systems from being developed and adopted as they require substantial investment which won’t happen until those making the investments are confident that appropriate policy infrastructure is in place.
Are not those responsible for investment one and the same as those responsible for policy infrastructure?
When I talk about the people responsible for investment I mean the major education publishing and exam companies. To invest in developing tracking systems which properly integrate formative and summative assessment and which link directly through to central government diagnostic infrastructures they need to know that what they are doing will link up efficiently and effecitively with policy re SATs and so on.
I entirely agree that private/charitable educational companies are unlikely to make major investments in education associated hardware/software and other systems without a stable and predictable customer base/market environment.
The game of political football that our educational system has been for as long as anyone can remember consequently desperately needs some cross party consensus on the way forward.
With the entrenched attitudes evidenced at every point on the party political compass, I don’t see any chance of that occurring in the foreseeable future.
Direct media and mass online discussion are new tools for improving things Tim.
I admire your confidence.
http://cyberrhetoricbyrebeccahanson.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/mass-online-discussion-and-democracy.html
Buckinghamshire Council has admitted that the 11+ test it uses has an inherent bias towards the more affluent. TES published part of a letter which the Council has sent to an academy which wanted access to 11+ results for fair banding purposes. It said:
“In the application of any test (11- plus, CATs or SATs), we know that affluence is a factor, probably a stronger factor than ethnicity.”
State education is a universal service paid for by taxpayers for the benefit of both children and society. It is unacceptable that education in parts of the country should be organised so that it (a) creams off 25% for what is perceived to be a “better” education leaving 75% to be educated in what are regarded unfairly as second-class schools, and (b) the 25% is chosen by a test which discriminates in favour of a particular group.
International evidence shows that the best-performing educational systems tend to be those that do not segregate children according to academic ability or geographical location. In selective counties, children are segregated at age 11. Supporters of grammar schools says that this system benefits bright, disadvantaged children – yet Buckinghamshire has said its test discriminates against such pupils. Perhaps this accounts for the low number of pupils eligible for free school meals in grammar schools.
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6210916
State schools in this country already have extremely high ranges of socio-economic and academic abilities groupings.
The root of many of our state educational problems lies in the extreme localisation of deprivation in certain areas that, of course, give the local schools huge challenges.
That is a social problem that cannot be ameliorated through the education system or local school admissions policies.
Private schools in this country of course do not offer a template of excellence for the state sector.
That is not to say that they do not offer examples of good practice from which the state sector can benefit, and, of course, vice versa:
http://www.silobreaker.com/public-school-to-create-chain-of-happy-academies-5_2265640910584807485
Number 10 focusing on a strategy which may provide a solution for a tiny number of schools again? How unusual.
Meanwhile the red guard continue to rush round the country destroying our ordinary comps in challenging communities due to this pipe dream fantasy they seem to operate under that when they have cleared out all the ‘failing teachers and heads’ people like Sir Anthony Seldon will magically appear in all those schools to fix the devastation they’ve caused.
It’s like the lie of Afghanistan – we will blow your country to bits and then we will rebuild its infrastructure. No you won’t – you’ll blow Afghanstan to bits and then spend the money which could of rebuilt it on blowing Iraq to bits and meanwhile Afghanistan will degenerate into hell and the Taliban will right back in because there’s no infrastructure there to stop them. The world’s attention moves on – nobody notices.
Same with schools. Ofsted blow one to bits and then report that they’ve ‘fixed it’ and swan off to blow the next one to bits. Nobody bothers to check. Only the LAs and the unions and who would listen to them now Gove has systematically had them destroyed by spin?
Mary Bousted and the team at ATL are some of the best informed and most intelligent people in education. To see the way they are being attacked makes my stomach knot and deeply degrades those involved in the attacks on them.
I had to google ‘Mary Bousted’ and ‘ATL’ to find out who they are.
I am a parent, an educational outsider, if you like.
I don’t see any correlation between education and Afghanistan.
I just see an unhappy child attending what is supposed to be an excellent state school.
I look to the government of the day to remedy that.
I pay my taxes.
I exercise my democratic vote, and I want action.
All I see in these columns is a call to return to a failed status quo.
Change and innovation is, of course, hugely disruptive. It happened to me, constantly, in a previous career.
“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”
But if parents, taxpayers, voters aren’t satisfied, something has to give:
Democracy, the least worst form of government.
‘Modern societies face several structural problems……..These problems are deeply rooted in societal structures and activities. In order to solve such deep societal problems changes from one system to another may be necessary (Berkhout, 2002). An understanding of the dynamics of transitions may assist policy makers to
help bring about these changes…….The proof of the pudding is in the eating, i.e.
use the perspective for empirical analyses of dynamics of socio-technical systems…They indicate that….systems of innovation…..have a fruitful life ahead of them..’
http://www2.sa.unibo.it/summer/testi/17_verganti/Geels2004.pdf
“I just see an unhappy child attending what is supposed to be an excellent state school.”I “look to the government of the day to remedy that.”
You sound like intelligent bloke Tim so I assume you went through all the usual steps first:
1. Talk to the school several times.
2. Work out what can be done through the child’s home life to improve the situation.
3. Discuss the situation with other parents and/or governors to more deeply understand what has been done in the past rectify similar situations and what has and hasn’t worked.
4. Look to wider examples to see how things might be otherwise and to understand what can be transferred to your local situation.
5. Consider moving the child to a different school.
6. Look to the government if policy development would help.
“But if parents, taxpayers, voters aren’t satisfied, something has to give”
Educating our children is possibly the most important responsibility we have. It is natural that we should be dissatisfied at times and should seek to improve things. There are many, many ways in which we can improve things for our children and the others in their community. Kicking the infrastructure of state education to bits probably isn’t the most likely to make a rapid positive impact especially if the way in which it is being dismantled hasn’t been thought through or consulted.
Rebecca,
You and I both know what is going on here.
Once a National Institution becomes overly bureaucratic, self interested, self absorbed, heavily unionised, luddite and attempts to subvert any attempts at reform, the easy answer for politicians, in particular, is to bypass it.
The previous administration did exactly that with the civil service.
This Government is doing it with education.
I also bypassed the local school with my daughter, moving her swiftly to a far, far better place, where she blossomed.
I was lucky to be able to do that.
I want every parent to be able to do the same thing, namely choose from a number of different local school options according to which they feel will be best for their offspring.
I’m confused Tim – clearly you’re talking about Ofsted but you say the government are bypassing them? They’re not, they’ve beefed them up with an army of inspectors with no experience of working in tough areas and who actually inexperienced enough to believe that Mossbourne Academy produces great results because it’s run with extreme discipline rather than because it has ludicrous amounts of money and poaches the best teachers and students from across London, carefully selects the students whose parents are going to support hot-housing and has far more teachers than normal schools can imagine and tiny classes.
These ‘trained experts’ are now rushing round the country shoving every comp in a tough area which operates on a normal budget into special measures or notice to improve. That’s hardly ‘bypassing the problem’ Tim.
Could it possibly be the case, Tim, that your daughter has blossomed at her new school because she isn’t in classes of 30 full of kids from seriously dysfunctional homes who arrive at school not in a fit state to learn, with undiagnosed issues which prevent them learning and make them demanding and without support, role models or hope for the future from outside schools? Or do you think it’s because all the teachers are stupid and lazy and need to be forced to work harder by them being randomly decimated at frequent intervals?
In regard to the English educational system, when I speak of a National Institution that has become overly bureaucratic, self interested, self absorbed, heavily unionised, luddite and which attempts to subvert any attempts at reform, I am, of course, talking about the Department of Education and large numbers of its employees.
I can’t help you with information on Ofsted. I know nothing about it.
The reason for the improvements in my daughter’s attitude to her education are quite simple, an orderly school run by an excellent Headmaster and bags of exercise.
Her previous school was a state school of unimpeachable reputation, rated excellent but which should have set itself even higher standards, given the affluence of its catchment area.
I have nothing but respect for the teaching profession, particularly since a number of members of my family have been teachers at one time or another.
I believe that teachers should be accorded a much higher status in our society, but they are not and I can neither explain that nor offer any advice as to how to change that state of affairs.
I simply see at first hand the results of an under performing state educational sector badly in need of many of the largely benevolent reforms being introduced by the coalition government and cannot understand the vehemence of opposition expressed in these articles and comments
Do you understand, Tim, that it’s possible for well intentioned reforms to actually be very poorly conceived and to have very serious consequences that those who actually understand education can clearly see coming and the politicians can’t?
‘The path to hell is paved with good intentions’.
We live in a democracy. Politicians need votes. Parents have votes and are not happy with the previous state educational status quo.
Hence the reforms. Once their effects are better understood, in three years, immediately before the next election, the country, and you, will have the opportunity to pass judgement.
Democracy, the least worst form of government.
But when a school such as WLFS succeeds in pulling it off you still don’t give it credit
Credit for what?
As an example of a free school it has about the same revenue funding as other state schools, was established for below average capital costs and as a measure of social composition has a free school meals percentage on about the average for its area.
Going underaverage for capital expenditure is not really difficult for a refurb project compared to the overcomplicated and bespoke BSF projects of the Labour years.
The performance remains to be seen but in terms of demand it is oversubscribed so the vision is attractive.
If other free schools present problems with these measures we need to know and I agree that reporting of free school and academy school statistics is deficient.
No-one knows yet the full cost of establishing WLFS in its permanent home, Palingswick House, which had a disposable value of £5.8 million. Palingswick House is a “building of merit” which will result in planning restrictions. The local council said it was expensive to maintain and estimated that it would cost multi-millions to bring it up-to-date. Perhaps the final cost of establishing WLFS in a refurbished “building of merit” will end up being more than the cost of a comparable new-build in 2012 (which is, in any case, less than than the cost of many of the prestigious BSF academy projects). Two new-build academies in Lincolnshire are being built at an estimated cost of £12 million and £9 million respectively.
http://www.shepherd-construction.co.uk/newsitem/shepherd-construction-makes-the-grade-on-lincolnshire-academies_p212_c3.aspx
“It also gives the private schools an ideologically gilded role in the entire schema by suggesting that they provide a key template for publicly funded school improvement.”
In what way are studio schools, university technical colleges and academies which can teach whatever curricululm they want templates of private schools? They can be trying to compete with private schools and be a template, as WLFS might be described, but they don’t have to follow this model at all.
In the case of UTCs they are focussed on vocational training linked very closely to employment but also expect their puplils to achieve in certain traditional disciplines relevant to vocation. Their admissions are open.
Ben,
I presume that you are involved with WLFS in some way, although I am not sure if Ben Taylor is your real name.
Anyway, a question: can you tell me what the attainment levels – in terms of key stage 2 results – are in this year’s first cohort at WLFS? Is it true that they are exceptionally high?
And could you comment on how high levels of attainment on entry that might shape the ‘ethos’ of a school?
Thanks
Melissa
I am not here under a pseudonym and it is really my picture. I appreciate being able to use this website.
My only involvement in WLFS is that I think it is a good idea and support it philosophically, as I do with the prinicple of free schools and all instances of free schools that can demonstrate support. I have had no practical involvement.
I don’t know the key stage 2 results. I actually agree that some of the reporting of free schools and academies needs improving to make them as comparable and transparent as maintained schools. Perhaps you know what key stage 2 results are for School 21 in Newham but I wouldn’t hold it against you if you don’t.
Toby Young wrote here that the FSM % was on about the average for the H & F Borough, apart from that I don’t know any other social measure of the school’s composition.
I don’t see a fundamental problem with high attainment as long as the admissions are equitable, something I believe has been addressed in principle with free schools policy and in the instance of WLFS. I think that different kinds of ‘ethos’ should be available to parents and children and in our urban areas especially that should be fairly easy to provide. It has already been done in an equivalent way in social care.
I don’t object to comprehensive schools where they have the support of their community, but I do object to them being the only form of state schooling available especially where local populations want alternatives.