Schools lotteries – it could be you

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By David ChaplinSchools

School admission lotteries are to be reviewed, Ed Balls announced last month amid concerns that they are having a “destabilising” effect on our kids.

This move is long overdue, school lotteries should be neither a first choice nor last resort for local authorities when determining which schools young people will attend and they put Labour on the wrong wide of the argument with parents, teachers, and pupils.

The system of random allocation was introduced as an option for local authorities in 2006. Only 25 local authorities have taken up the option, but it has begun a heated debate about the purpose of lottery systems used for awarding secondary school places. Lotteries have since been pushed by some as a solution to inequality and a way to address failing schools, but I think it’s not the right way to improve standards or increase social mobility.

The pro-Lottery argument goes that new facilities and investment will not make up for the important difference made to a school and its pupils by parents who are engaged in their children’s education. Lottery advocates argue that many of these engaged parents have themselves been through higher education, are members of established professions, and populate prosperous and middle class neighbourhoods. So, by randomly allocating secondary school places to children across a specified area (i.e. a Local Authority) these model parents and their kids will bring new skills and aspirations to schools in traditionally deprived neighbourhoods – therefore improving school achievement and boosting social mobility.

In London, where I am a secondary school governor, school places are always in demand for high achieving schools. A good school will boost house prices in the vicinity and will often have a trickle down effect on primary schools close by. The downside to this is that the low-achieving schools often suppress house prices or are already surrounded by poor quality housing in areas where there is limited social mobility. In many London boroughs such as Haringey and Islington this educational and class divide is a reality.

But school lotteries are not the right answer. Randomly allocating school places would mean that buying an expensive house, in an affluent neighbourhood, next door to a good comprehensive wouldn’t guarantee a place there for your child. But it would also create a new set of problems for all students, rich or poor.

The logistics of bussing pupils across a London borough to get to their allocated school are not pretty, nor is the impact it would have on social capital and existing networks that children leaving primary school (aged 11) may already have. Recent research carried out by Newcastle University in the town has found that attending a non-local school is not an option for many of the worst-off families because neither a car nor a parent is available to transport the children. The research picks up on the fact that middle class families are far more likely to have such resources at their disposal, enabling them to take up the places they are allocated via a school lottery system.

This will be of concern to parents and pupils in Brighton – a Labour controlled authority – which is proposing a lottery system on the well-rehearsed arguments of fairness and equality of opportunity. However, the Newcastle researchers conclude “our research suggests such a system may have exactly the opposite result to fairness and equality of opportunity.”

So why are some Labour LEAs now taking up the offer and pushing ahead with random allocation of school places? In a way, it is about fairness and the Government’s ability to deliver a good standard of education for all children across the country, and it’s about ends and means.

I believe that the new National Challenge (which pumps investment into schools which are failing to meet their targets) is a strong way to tackle the inequality that Lottery advocates also want addressed. By offering failing schools a target, and the resources to help them get there, the Government is on the right track. It may not be popular in high-performing schools (who see it as rewarding failure) but if managed properly and given time to bear fruit, the National Challenge could turn around failing schools and provide a lasting legacy for Labour’s reforming education policies.

Advocates of school lotteries may want to end the educational advantages of the middle class silos scattered across London and elsewhere by forcing wealthy children to go to failing schools – but sharing the pain is not a sensible or workable approach. It also pits Labour against progressive forces of social mobility within the middle classes and reduces choice for parents and pupils in education. We should be aiming for aspiration and equality of opportunity for all pupils not taking it from some and trying to spread it amongst the rest.

School admission lotteries set us squarely on the wrong side of the equality argument.

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