Tag: market reforms

“All we want is a good local school”

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

CMPO Viewpoint

Rebecca Allen and Simon Burgess

Twoarticles in the Times Education Supplement (TES) last Friday nicely illustrate the debate on school choice and school competition.

The first reports results from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS), citing research by Sonia Exley, at the LSE, showing that most respondents thought that school choice was not a priority.

A familiar refrain in the school choice debate is that “all we want is a good local school”. There should be little doubt that this is indeed what most parents do want. We have used data from the Millennium Cohort Study to estimate the relative weights that parents place on the characteristics of primary schools. Unsurprisingly, school academic quality is positively valued, and distance between home and school is highly negatively valued. This makes a lot of sense: many parents have to make this journey four times a day. So, yes, people, do…

View original post 730 more words

What are Free Schools for?

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

CMPO Viewpoint

Rebecca Allen and Simon Burgess

As children start their lessons in the 24 Free Schools opening this week, a new experiment begins in English education. The founders and staff will have been working hard for this day over many months and no doubt all will wish the pupils and staff well. There has been a lot of politicalpassion on both sides of the debate, but what is the significance of the Free Schools experiment likely to be?

It is not an experiment because of the “free” part – Free schools will enjoy essentially the same freedoms as Academies do.  It is an experiment because now anyone can propose to set up a school, and attract the same per-pupil funding from the state as other local schools. Anyone can propose … but the vetting process to check whether the applicants are “fit and proper” to run a school is…

View original post 900 more words

Revising the Draft School Admissions Code

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

CMPO Viewpoint

Rebecca Allen and Simon Burgess

From next week, officials in the Department for Education are going to be busy sifting through responses to the consultation exercise around the new School Admissions Code.

Two important issues in the proposed code relate to the priority given to school staff, and to random allocation. We believe that as they currently stand, these provisions will set back the goals that the Government has set for its education policy.

1. Prioritising the children of staff

Paragraph  1.33 of the code says: “If admissions authorities decide to give priority to children of staff, they must set out clearly in their admission arrangements how they will define staff and on what basis children will be prioritised.”

This suggests that admissions authorities are to be allowed to prioritise the children of staff, reversing the policy of recent Admissions Codes.

One group very likely to be included in…

View original post 1,122 more words

Copying Swedish Free School Reforms

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

England’s schools are currently facing the prospect of the most radical reform since the dismantling of selective schooling four decades ago with the Conservatives looking to replicate Sweden’s free school reforms. The work of Swedish economists used to support the argument that choice and competition has improved academic performance, is however less unambiguous than the …

Continue reading Copying Swedish Free School Reforms

School autonomy and pupil achievement

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

One of the stated policy motivations behind the move towards greater autonomy for schools from local authority control has been the claim that this is a route to improving academic standards. This might be through more efficient decision-making and resource usage or because autonomy is a necessary precursor to market-like reforms whereby schools are somehow …

Continue reading School autonomy and pupil achievement

School autonomy and social segregation

On By Becky Allen2 Comments

One major concern with policies that allow schools autonomy from local authority control is that they exacerbate inequalities in who gets to go to school where, i.e. pupils sorting or segregation. The extent to which pupils from low-income families are concentrated in certain schools can be indicative of inequalities in access to schools and the …

Continue reading School autonomy and social segregation

Changes in school segregation in England

On By Becky AllenLeave a comment

Measuring and trying to understand the reasons for changes in school segregation in England is central to the evaluation of policies designed to increase choice and competition both in and since the 1988 Education Reform Act. Many argued these policies would have unintended sorting consequences in terms of changes in the distribution of pupils from …

Continue reading Changes in school segregation in England