Why we should oppose making profit out of schools

It perhaps says something about how worried the Tories are about what’s coming out of Leverson that Michael Gove should want to try and divert attention from his own performance by floating again the idea of profit making schools. Maybe he thought that, as a result, no one would notice his hymn of praise to Rupert Murdoch and all his works. Obviously there was no hint of a vested interest in this just because this is a company he used to, and that his wife still does, work for.

Talk of profit making has brought out the usual suspects to tell us that this is the next logical step and why wouldn’t everyone want to do this. One anonymous source told the TES “when you buy a product you don’t ask where the profits go, you ask if the product is any good”. And continued “the consensus is that parents are so fed up with bad quality education they would like to see something different.”

In many ways these quotes tell us all we need to know about people who propagate this stuff:

1. Education is a product you buy – schools are just things plonked down somewhere by some anonymous company. Then as parents you go to Sainsbury or Tesco – assuming they’re prepared to have you. No notion that a school should actually belong to the community it serves and should promote the values and interests of that community. Some people say it doesn’t matter who provides schools as long as they’re good – actually, it does if we think that people in a democracy have any right at all to influence what kind of schools their children go to.
2.  Don’t ask where the profits go – someone is taking money out of the school – but we’re not to know who or how much. After all there is such a thing as commercial confidentiality. Intriguingly, on the opposite page of the TES, it reports that the Schools Network – previously the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and the cheerleader for marketization right back to the days of grant maintained schools – has gone bust. One reason, it reports is the cost of its £1.4 million a year offices in Millbank Tower.  So no, we don’t need to ask where the profits are going – we know it’ll be fat management salaries, expenses and offices.
3. Parents are fed up – are they really? Every survey I’ve ever seen says parents are very happy with the school their children go to.  And in many places they’ve sent a very clear message that they don’t want their schools handed over to private companies. Only this February, Populus recorded 79% opposition to private companies making a profit out of state schools. 
4. Something different – what we know will be different is, if there is money to be made, the private sector will ignore quality in pursuit of a fast buck. That’s why Free Schools don’t have to employ qualified teachers – the first step in a dangerous road. Or to take another current example, it’s why SERCO think its ok for 1 out of hours GP to cover the whole of Cornwall. We don’t want the cheapest schools – we want the best.

There is of course one reason for us not worrying too much about all this. Nick Clegg has said it won’t happen. So that’s all right then … isn’t it…….?? Rather more importantly, Stephen Twigg has rapidly come out firmly against profit making from state schools. It’s urgent now that the case is made as to why this has to be stopped in its tracks or its going to be one of those things that creeps up on us before the argument has been had. As Mark Twain said “a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on”. We need to get our boots on for this one before it’s too late.

Be part of Labour Policy making

Labour’s education policy making is at a crucial stage. Policy reviews are currently underway covering special educational needs, the school curriculum and the decentralisation of power (the “middle tier”). At the same time the Gove revolution continues to gather pace and issues such as forced academy conversion are arousing huge controversy.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know the kind of issues that the SEA is addressing, how it reacts to government policies and how it’s seeking to help to shape Labour’s emerging policies.

It’s against this background that the SEA is holding its Annual Conference on Saturday 23^rd June in Birmingham. The centrepiece of the day will be the Birmingham campaign against forced academy conversion  with a debate led by Richard Burden MP. Other sessions will consider issues arising from the Labour policy reviews and campaigning plans for the year ahead. The next twelve months are going to be critical both in building opposition to the creeping privatisation of education and in developing policies for a new Labour government in 2014.

Some readers will be members of SEA already. To come to the conference just contact socialisteducation@virginmedia.com and book your place. The conference is at:

The Priory Rooms

Quaker Meeting House

40 Bull Street

Birmingham B4 6AF

 and will run from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm. Its £20 waged and £15 unwaged including lunch.

If you’re not a member, what about joining now and playing a full part in SEA policy making and activities? All members receive the bi-monthly journal “Education Politics”. A membership form is to be found at http://www.socialisteducation.org.uk/content/join-sea. Book in for the conference at the same time.

Finally, if you’re really not a joiner, the central part of the programme – from 12.00 to 3.15 – is open to any supporter of SEA and Labour education policies. Again just book your place by contacting socialisteducation@virginmedia.com. The non-member rate is £15 or £12 unwaged again including lunch.

When we shouldn’t just leave it to schools

“We trust teachers – the professionals on the front line – to do what is best for their pupils.” This is the mantra which the Department for Education brings out whenever it’s faced with an issue it doesn’t want to have to address. They mean of course teachers in academies and free schools – no one else is allowed an opinion. It doesn’t apply for example to heads and teachers who don’t want to become academies or to those who want to use a wider range of methods to teach reading. They need to do what they’re told.

But let’s look at three recent cases where the DfE’s non- intervention policy is having some very clear effects on children. First, and best known, there’s the row over nutrition standards. A survey of 100 academies showed that 89% were in breach of the regulations that apply to other schools. This is not some minor issue of health and safety bureaucracy. It’s about children’s health and about ensuring that they ensuring that bad food and drink doesn’t have harmful effects on behaviour and on their readiness to learn. But academies don’t have to follow the regulations And Michael Gove has made it clear he doesn’t intend to make them. You may wonder why they don’t follow the guidance anyway …. perhaps someone should ask them what share of the profits they’re getting from the junk food industry.

Less well known outside specialists in the field are the attempts of some academies and free schools either not to admit or to get rid of pupils who present particular challenges. On his website “A Can of Worms” barrister David Wolfe documents many issues of this kind. Recently he describes a case (at http://davidwolfe.org.uk/wordpress/archives/1114) where an academy totally ignored the requirements of the statement and put a child on a reduced (two hours a day) timetable. David Wolfe comments “it is interesting to note that the academy clearly did not consider itself legally bound to make the provision in the pupils’ statement of SEN. The impression which I often get in such cases is that many academies are not overly concerned with the legality of what they are doing. They consider themselves free to do whatever they want”.

In this case, the Tribunal found for the child and the family and ordered the school to undertake a comprehensive retraining programme on the requirements of the Equalities Act. In another case however, an SEN Tribunal decided that it could not require an academy to take a child named in a statement because those rules only apply to local authority maintained schools. The only redress for the family would be to appeal to the Secretary of State!

The third example is to be found on James Hargrave’s wonderful blog (http://blog.hargrave.org.uk/2012/05/seckford-schools-curriculum-and-special.html) which charts the particular lunacies of the free school saga in Suffolk. In this instance, he describes the attempts of a parent with a child with substantial special needs to establish what opportunities would be available in one of the proposed free schools. In particular she wanted to know about non GCSE qualifications as her child was unlikely to be successful at GCSE. The school’s response was that it would only offer academic GCSE’s and proposed to make no provision for pupils for whom that was unsuitable.  When challenged, the school simply stopped answering any communications. The parent concluded finally that “I can only assume that your failure to respond is a strategy that you hope will put off parents like me from choosing your school for their children.”

 That’s just the highlights – I recommend reading the correspondence in full.  Sadly this is far from a unique case. Offering a narrow curriculum focussed exclusively around academic GCSEs is becoming a favourite ploy of schools that want to manipulate their intake.

So can we just leave everything to our new bright and shining independent schools? If we do it seems clear that many pupils are going to get a very raw deal and Michael Gove will be very busy sorting out complaints – as will in due course the courts.

The Future of SEN

The government has now published its long awaited response to the consultation that followed the publication of the SEN Green paper. A draft bill is due to be published in the summer with actual legislation to follow later in the current session.

The aims of a more streamlined system, better information for families, more early intervention and better trained staff are ones no one could argue with and some of the proposals may help achieve these things. There is however a basic naivety about the government’s proposals which suggests that they have limited understanding of how SEN systems work and a touching optimism about how much effect their proposals will have.

Fundamentally the document fails to come to terms with the basic reality that spending on special educational needs, just like health care and social care, has to be rationed. There is not a bottomless pit of resources and local authorities have always had to try to balance the resources available against the (always greater) needs of the young people. Everyone, including central government, then turns round and castigates local authorities for being uncaring and insensitive. Nothing in these proposals will change that reality and the result is still sometimes going to be disagreement, even conflict.

Budget cuts already mean that all over the country there are cuts in Educational Psychology services and other specialist SEN teaching services.  This makes a nonsense of pledges to speed up assessment and improve support. It can only make conflicts in the system worse.

Lurking in the small print of these proposals is the notion of contracting out SEN assessment to the voluntary sector. This we are told will make the process more independent. But who then will be responsible for keeping provision within budget? Making decisions about services when you don’t have financial responsibility for them is a recipe for chaos. Maybe it would be better to cut costs by using someone like Atos with all their splendid experience of assessing people with disabilities.

As ever, academies and free schools are the magic bullet that will transform the system. The first coalition achievement with regard to schools is apparently “we have given more schools the opportunity to convert to Academies and gain the freedom to innovate, improve standards and raise the achievement of all pupils.”  Locally maintained schools are of course strictly forbidden from doing any of these things. You might want to rewrite the sentence as “we have given more schools the freedom to manipulate their admissions criteria and to offer a curriculum that is only appropriate for academic high achievers”  

Another reality of course is that academies – especially the Gove academies with their favoured intakes – are taking funding away from local SEN services and can spend it on whatever they feel like.

The other big plank of the government’s paper is to explore giving people personal budgets to purchase their own support. It’s far from clear what kinds of support this would apply to but there is a proposal to “set up trials to test direct payments to families for education support”. Still pretty fuzzy – how would this work against the conclusions of the statutory assessment process? Would it mean parents can decide for themselves what the appropriate support is and ignore the judgement of the specialist services? If not, what does it mean? And of course it will be cash limited so parents will not necessarily get what they want, rather what they can afford. It sounds like a recipe for disputes and for an extra bureaucratic layer of key workers and contract writing.

Of course, one thing it could mean is that parents will be able to buy from private providers. This would represent yet another step in the privatisation and fragmentation of education. Crucially, if some people opt out of a service, it won’t be there for those who do want it, whether you’re talking about school transport or direct education services like teachers of the deaf. That, as in so many other areas, is the reality of this government’s approach to public services.

The State of the Teaching Profession

The recruitment, retention, quality and morale of the teaching profession has become a high profile issue over the last couple of weeks. The Observer made the state of teacher morale its front page lead with two pages of further analysis inside. Recent speeches by Michael Gove and Michael Wilshaw have also made headlines. Less well reported was the report of the Education Select Committee on teacher recruitment and retention.

Everyone pays appropriate lip service to the importance of teacher quality. The Select Committee comes up with some wonderfully dramatic figures to show this, telling us that Harvard academics have calculated that “a teacher who is in the top 5 per cent generates about $250,000 or more of additional earnings for their students over their lives in a single classroom of about 28 students”.  Sounds impressive till you work out that that amounts to about $200 a year for each of the students over their lifetimes. Hardly life changing!

Nevertheless, a focus on teachers is very welcome. The reminder that “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” is long overdue and should remind us that all Michael Gove’s tinkering with school systems don’t address this issue and may well be counter- productive.

At the core of the discontent found in the profession seems to be the feeling that teachers are not respected and are not trusted. The only language ministers seem to be able to use is that of blame and threats and in this they have been joined dramatically by the Chief Inspector. As the Observer put it “Gove has told teachers they are” in the firing line” unless they make sure pupils behave and succeed.

Against this it is encouraging to see Stephen Twigg making the case for raising the status as well as the quality of the teaching profession. It should really be obvious that teaching won’t become a high status profession if it is constantly being denigrated – after all you don’t get good outcomes from pupils if all they get is criticism!

The report of the Select Committee did recognise some of the significant issues. It understood that the downgrading of the university role in initial teacher education is an issue – “on the job training” as the government calls it is hardly the mark of a serious profession. This attitude reflects the government’s view that it wants teachers who do what they’re told and not ones who question and expect to have policy that is grounded in evidence and research.

The Select Committee also recognised the importance of continuing professional development and quotes some interesting examples of good practice at home and abroad. It also offers some interesting thoughts about alternative career structures.

Where it falls down however is in thinking through how its ideas might actually work. So, for example, in relation to CPD, it ignores the collapse of established structures for the delivery of CPD. Local advisory services are disappearing. University departments are under assault. Teaching schools are a good idea but there is no plan to ensure national coverage. School to school support is being undermined by being left to the random and self-interested decisions of schools and academy chains. What’s left is an incoherent jumble of competing providers with no guarantee that teachers will be able to access what they need. Suggesting the re-creation of something very like the general Teaching Council which the government has just abolished is hardly a credible answer.

Then finally the committee falls for the old chestnut of performance related pay. In doing so it shows up its failure to really understand the nature of teaching and school life. They want a “pay system which rewards those teachers who add the greatest value to pupil performance.”  Presumably then, you would have to measure the performance of every pupil in every subject every year so you can work out every teachers’ added value. Then perhaps make an adjustment to allow for those teaching more challenging pupils and for those where parents (and private tutors) are really making the difference. Then to allow for, for example, the science teachers whose pupils have a poor maths teacher or the history teacher whose pupils have a bad English teacher. And so the bureaucratic nightmare goes on.

To be fair, the issues that the Select Committee identifies are often real even if their answers lack imagination and rigour. But it doesn’t go to the heart of the matter which is our lack of respect for professionalism in education. If we want to match the performance of the most successful countries, we need people to go into a profession that they can feel proud of – not one constantly being blamed for every problem in our society.

The RSA Academies Commission

The RSA has established a three person commission to inquire into the implications of the complete academisation of the school system. The remit of the commission is to consider:

• The implications of complete academisation for school improvement and pupil attainment
• How improvement and attainment can best be secured within an academised system
• The model and incipient outcomes from a school improvement perspective, focusing on issues of accountability, due diligence, and outcomes for pupils.
• Emerging trends, risks, and related questions, concentrating on public interest.

The three members of the commission are Christine Gilbert, former HMCI, Chris Husbands, Director of the Institute of Education and Brett Wigdortz, Chief Executive of Teach First and previously of McKinsey’s.

It’s immediately apparent that the remit of the commission is a very narrow one, concentrating on the possible implications for pupil outcomes. It makes the initial assumption that academy status will be the norm, ignoring the very apparent resistance in much of the primary sector in particular. One imagines that much of the report will be  speculative given that extrapolating from a few hundred academies to 20,000 is to say the least a risky thing to do.

Fortunately readers of the TES will know that at least one member of the Commission does not intend to trouble herself with evidence or with anybody else’s views. In Christine Gilbert’s view, leaving it all to schools to sort out is fine …”notions of commissioners and other sorts of middle tier are not the right way to be going”.

The initial point to make is surely that Ms Gilbert now has no business chairing a supposedly impartial enquiry. If she continues, its findings will have little validity given her public statement pre-empting its work.

More fundamentally, the article betrays a serious failure to understand what commissioning means and what issues will need to be addressed by her much maligned middle tier. Issues currently being ignored by the government and apparently by her include:

-          Making sure that there are enough appropriate local schools to meet the needs of the community and that they’re run in ways that have the support of local people – that includes the role of sponsors, chains and trusts;

-          Monitoring the performance of schools and intervening when performance is inadequate – not just waiting four or five years for Ofsted to arrive;

-          Having oversight of the governance and financial management of schools so that the public interest comes first;

-          Ensuring that all schools have access to support – school to school support should certainly be an important part of the system but someone has to make sure that no school is left out and that schools accept support when they need it;

-          Looking after the interests of vulnerable pupils – the ones that many of our so-called good schools do their best to avoid taking;

-          Listening to the concerns of people locally, including making sure complaints are properly dealt with.

Actually delivering support or sharing expertise is only one part of the process of managing the school system. It will not manage itself and, if left to do so, scandals like the Beccles Free School decision and the Priory Academy Chain will undoubtedly multiply.

 If it is to be taken seriously, the RSA Commission will need to widen its remit and consider who will take practical responsibility to ensure the effective and honest working of 20,000 schools and who will make sure that the concerns of parents and children throughout the country are listened to. At present Michael Gove is trying to do all these things for 1500 schools, failing dismally and wasting hundreds of millions of public money in the process.

We certainly need a proper strategic review of the future of the school system as a whole. It’s clearly true that we won’t be going back to 1997, let alone 1987.  But there are a whole set of issues that the government is pretending just don’t need to be addressed which will not go away.

What we really need to do about social mobility

Increasing the level of social mobility has become the holy grail of social policy over the past 10 or 15 years. The working definition of social mobility is the extent to which children’s income and occupation are related to those of their parents. It is now fairly widely accepted that there is less social mobility in the UK compared with many advanced countries. Changing this was a priority for the educational policy of the Labour government and the coalition claims that they share this ambition.

The starting point for policy development was the assertion that the links between poverty, low educational attainment and social and economic status as an adult could and should be broken. This continues to be the view of the All Party Group on Social Mobility whose report has just been issued.

As a consequence we’ve seen a barrage of initiatives designed to raise standards in schools attended by more disadvantaged pupils. Some have been positive and supportive programmes ranging from Sure Start through Excellence in Cities and London Challenge to the Pupil Premium. Others have been more punitive – an inspection regime that has impacted more severely on schools with poorer pupils, threats of closure and forced conversion to academy status.

It would be wrong to say that nothing has been achieved. Some tests show a closing of the gap between, for example, pupils on free meals and the rest. But more commonly we see higher test scores across the board so that children from wealthier backgrounds maintain their lead and their access to higher status universities and careers.

The parliamentary report identifies what it calls “seven key truths” about social mobility

1. The point of greatest leverage for social mobility is what happens between ages 0 and 3, primarily in the home
2. You can also break the cycle through education…
3. . …the most important controllable factor being the quality of your teaching
4. But it’s also about what happens after the school bell rings
5. University is the top determinant of later opportunities – so pre-18 attainment is key
6. But later pathways to mobility are possible, given the will and support
7. Personal resilience and emotional wellbeing are the missing link in the chain

Predictably the press coverage degenerated into stories about managing children’s bed time and getting them their “five a day”. The Tory press even more predictably saw the answer in bringing back the grammar schools, in the face of all the evidence which shows that grammar schools simply entrench the advantage of the already privileged.

The committee is not wrong in identifying seven important issues. But as with every other initiative in the last 20 years they are not getting to the real reason why the things they want aren’t happening. What they have not done is to reflect on the lesson of this simple graph:

The message is very clear – the greater the inequality, the less social mobility you find. This is a message the OECD has been preaching for years but it’s one that we have consistently ignored. Since about 1980, our society has become steadily more unequal as the rich have taken an ever-increasing share of national wealth.

So here are seven alternative truths about social mobility that might start to make a real difference:

1. Reverse the cuts in tax credits and other welfare payments so as to at least mitigate the coming explosion in child poverty.
2. All employers to adopt the “living wage” as a minimum.
3. Cut the differential between average and top pay in all organisations.
4. Make children secure in their homes by giving tenants more security and imposing rent controls.
5. Don’t cut free school meals and make sure food quality is maintained.
6. Understand that getting people into work is about creating jobs not punishing the unemployed.
7. Restore the full range of services in Sure Start Children’s Centres.

 If we did some- even better all – of these things, our schools would have a chance to really close the attainment gap. But while we are set on a path that will increase inequalities in our society, asking schools to carry the can is never going to be the answer.

Labour Curriculum Review – have your say

The Labour Party curriculum review is now well under way and SEA and the party are keen to gather views as widely as possible.

Following the initial consultation meetings, some key questions about the future of the school curriculum have been identified.  Please think about letting us have your views on as many of the questions as you wish.

To comment, either make a response on this blog or e mail socialisteducation@virginmedia.com.

The next stage in the review will be to publish a draft review document in early June. Details will be on this blog as soon as they are available.

The key questions on which the party is seeking views are: 

1. Do we still need a National Curriculum?
2. If we do, should it apply to all state funded schools?
3. How do you react to the proposals from the government’s review ?
4. What is the proper place for political decision making, professional decision making at a national level and decision making at school level about the curriculum?
5. Do we need to look again at the transition from early years to Key Stage 1?
6. Should all curriculum areas (however defined) by compulsory up to 14? If so, how much flexibility should there be for schools and how can a National Curriculum be designed which ensures that there is space for innovation by schools?
7. How can a National Curriculum support the development of things like personal qualities and attitudes and dispositions – which are often highly valued by employers? Or should the curriculum restrict itself to knowledge and skills?
8. How detailed should a National Curriculum be – should some areas be more detailed than others?
9. What should be the compulsory elements of the curriculum at Key Stage 4?
10. What kinds of vocational courses and qualifications are appropriate at Key Stage 4?
11. Is there a case for radical change of assessment at 16+? If so what might an alternative look like?
12. Given that parents and the wider public now expect to have a lot of information about schools, how can we measure what schools are achieving for their pupils without narrowing the curriculum through “teaching to the test”?
13. Do you agree with the Secretary of State and HMCI that expectations for age 11 should be higher than at present?

A Levels and the Gove Threat

Trevor Fisher writes:

The threat of revolution in academic school exams.

 A Level reform – turning back to traditional exams controlled by elite universities – has long been part of Gove’s plan. But his actual proposals, in a letter to OFQUAL on March 31^st – go beyond the EBac agenda he has imposed at GCSE Level. EBac is a bundle of existing GCSE and while there is a common agenda for GCSE and A Level, there is a drive to chaos within Gove’s A Level agenda.

 This was clear once Gove threatened to revolutionise a “discredited” exam system in the Times of June 18^th 2011. The exam system is not discredited. This is reactionary Tory dogma. Worryingly the proposals driven by Gove not only threaten A Level but also the independence of OFQUAL, particularly with the board now dominated by Gove nominees.

 The imminence of the consultation on A Level due June must take priority. There is a strong case for taking GCSE and A Level together as a policy area. However June is only just round the corner and A Level will require an immediate response.

 Reform Yes, Revolution No

An important contribution to the discussion is Mike Baker’s article in the Guardian of 17^th April. He rightly accepted there is a need for reform, without accepting the apocalyptic Gove vision. Indeed, he noted the OFQUAL report, rushed out on April 3 broadly indicated that universities like A Level, but there are problems which need to be addressed. However he correctly wondered (a|) if universities can design A Levels as happened 30 years ago given the academic league table pressures to produce research and teaching. Exam design could be a bridge too far. He also correctly asked who would pay. Presumably exam boards (who would pass the costs on to schools in exam fees).  

The view from the top

Indeed, Gove has dived in following the front page article in the Times last June without consultation. No one knows if the universities are able to deliver. Increasingly undergraduate teaching is done by PhD students in the elite universities, so where is the skill base? Possibly retired academics could be drafted in, but he gives no sign of thinking through practicalities. His letter, written largely in the first person, assumes that the drivers would be Russell Group universities – he sees no others – and that there would be no comparability between A Levels because he wants “a welcome diversity between our best universities”. Competition in other words, based on different exams.

What is the view of David Willetts on all this?

The head of OFQUAL welcomed university involvement as all commentators have done. However she calls for “significant” numbers of elite universities to sign up – welcome but not sufficient.  A Level has to be a tariff, and accepted by all end users, and as she notes, the issue of teaching must be addressed. Teachers must know the system is workable. Testing of options must be carried out.

The tyranny of 2014

Alas OFQUAL, which is under intense pressure, has accepted that some new exams could be ready by September 2014. It is not acceptable to have some exams available, new and old competing, while other subject areas are lagging behind. While Gove has stopped – just – from ordering his new prescription, OFQUAL is not as independent as it should be. September 2014 (29 months away: and the consultation has not yet started!) has a political significance. With the law saying an election must happen in May 2015, Gove needs to have a political scalp to wave in the air. The exam system must not become a political trophy. No new system can be devised in 29 months, and the first step is to campaign against a cherry picked and politically motivated date of September 2014.

Otherwise we will see A Level descending into chaos, as competing universities try to play the market and small providers, with inadequate resources, compete for market share while students and teachers have little or no idea what the best options are to get into the market for expensive and increasingly randomised university places. The best funded schools at the top end of the independent sector will get the glittering prizes – already a mere 5 institutions take 30% of Oxbridge places. For the hard right the prize is a totally stratified admissions system for HE. For Gove’s critics, the opposite has to be the aim. Above all, OFQUAL’s independence from short term political pressures has to be defended.

Selection a live issue again

Suddenly selection is once again a live issue in the education debate once again. We’ve seen the devious use of the new Admissions Code to enable Kent to propose effectively a new grammar school in Sevenoaks. We’ve seen the BBC put out a quite extraordinarily one sided history of the grammar school – we still await of course the history of the secondary modern. Only this week 100 Tory MPs turned out at the parliamentary “Friends of Grammar Schools” reception – including Michael Gove.

We’re often told that there are “only” 164 grammar schools, so why do we bother ourselves too much. To begin with of course that means maybe 500 secondary moderns – so maybe 20% of secondary schools are affected by formal selection processes. But this ignores the much greater number of covert grammar schools.

In 2006, about 25% of pupils got below Level 4 in their Key Stage 2 SATs. From the 2011 performance tables, we now know how they were distributed across the country’s secondary schools. There are no less than 560 secondary schools where, in 2011, less than 10% of the year 11 pupils achieved below Level 4. This includes such lauded “comprehensives” as Thomas Telford and London Oratory (both 1%). Interestingly, ignoring the genuine grammar schools, two thirds of these schools manage their own admissions – a far higher proportion than in the country as a whole at that time.

So we need to be very clear that overt selection is only the tip of the iceberg. Our system is actually riddled with selection, often without even an attempt at a fair testing process.

Now though, even the testing process has taken an unexpected hit by the rather tactless admission by Buckinghamshire County Council (a fully selective authority) that “in the application of any test (11+, CATs or SATs), we know that affluence is a factor, probably a stronger factor than ethnicity.”

So here we have a selective authority admitting openly that the selection process they use is known to be biased in favour of the wealthy. Actually, not only are they admitting it favours the wealthy, they’re admitting its biased in relation to ethnicity as well – just not quite as much!

Bizarrely this emerged because one secondary modern in Bucks was trying to use the 11+ test data to establish a banding system for admissions and to get itself a comprehensive intake. Buckinghamshire is apparently happy to use a biased and flawed test for its own grammar schools – but clearly any argument to stop a genuine comprehensive emerging is good enough. You have to hope that Bucks have good lawyers because someone surely will be looking at the legality of a system it admits itself is unfair.

Meanwhile the evidence that says selection, as well as being unfair, lowers achievement continues to mount. The OECD regularly makes the point that overall achievement is highest when schools have balanced intakes. It concluded recently that “increasing the social mix within schools appears to boost performance of disadvantaged students without any apparent negative effects on overall performance”.

For those who want to develop the case against selection further, there is now a brilliant new resource on the website of Comprehensive Future. It documents very fully the arguments, complete with very detailed academic references. It should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in educational policy making. It can be found at: http://www.comprehensivefuture.org.uk/PDF/SelectionShouldEnd.pdf