Education and Inspections Bill

I am not going to give way now as I want to make some progress. Let us look at the evidence on admissions and social segregation. From the Sutton Trust, to Simon Burgess’s work at the University of Bristol, to Rebecca Allen from the Institute of Education, the findings are similar. Schools that control their own admissions and perform highly are less likely to take poorer students than the catchment area would predict. The Government will say that they have outlawed more schools being able to select by ability, that they have forced schools to operate in accordance with the new code, and that they have legislated to prevent schools from interviewing in order to choose pupils. That is welcome, but it is not enough. Very few schools use interviews to select pupils anyway. Much more serious are the covert measures such as gerrymandering of catchment areas, name recognition and selection by aptitude, which is really just a semantic sleight of hand for selection by ability. Is anybody really convinced that a code to be published after the Bill will be tough enough anyway? Will it be sufficiently tight? Can a beefed-up admissions forum police it adequately? Will it have the data? Will it be prepared to challenge the data provided? Will it really be prepared to grass on its high-performing local schools to the schools adjudicator? Frankly, a system that needs so many safeguards probably is not safe in the first place. One wonders how on earth parents are supposed to navigate their way around a system with so many more schools operating their own criteria. One choice adviser per local authority is about as far as the proposed £12 million is going to go.