Los tres periodos de la obra de Guillem Sagrera

One persistent educational debate has been the impact of school type on student

performance. Policy over the last thirty years provided parents with choice and increasing diversity in schools because of the belief that market forces and competition would promote improved performance and drive ‘failing’ schools out of the system. Research on the impact of this policy of choice on student intake has been undertaken from a number of perspectives, geographical, sociological, historical and economic.

Geographical research showed that diversity in school performance had a geographical and socio-economic dimension because of variation in attainment on entry (see for example Bradford, 1990) which led to the introduction of Value Added and Contextual Value Added measures that attempted to reduce these effects. Another study at a local scale found that ‘where pupils live within a catchment area affects their attainment’ partly associated with community effects and the shared attitudes of friends and neighbours

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(Moulden and Bradford, 1984 quoted in Bradford, 1990: 8). A further outcome of this research was the tentative suggestion that where choice of school had been exercised children had higher attainment.

‘Good marketing or an existing good reputation may then, in itself, by attracting large numbers of motivated pupils from outside its old catchment area, improve the attainment level of its pupils.’

(Bradford, 1990) This paper suggested that school choice was not equal since there was less choice

available in rural than urban areas and parents / pupils attitudes to schools were likely to be influenced by friends and neighbours. Deprivation would also affect choice if parents could not afford to pay for transport.

These ideas have been developed over time with other reasons for the educational segregation of schools including:

patterns of residential segregation, contrasting approaches to allocating schools places (such as banding or catchment areas) and the proportion of schools not sharing their local authority approach to allocating places (such as faith-based or selective schools)

(Gorard, 2009a, p 641). Another study (Gibbons and Telhaj, 2007) comparing stratification (segregation) in schools showed large variation in intake between types of school but little change over the time period analysed (1996-2002). Comparing different types of school to community

comprehensive schools they found, as expected, selective grammar schools had a higher mean score and a narrower spread of ability while secondary modern schools had a lower mean intake and a slightly lower spread of ability. Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools also had slightly higher means and a compressed ability range. Community comprehensive

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schools were the largest group and had a mean intake score lower than the mean for all schools, as was the spread of ability. Voluntary controlled schools that did not have control over admissions have mean intake scores and spread of ability similar to community comprehensive schools. City Technology Colleges that could select on the basis of aptitude and interest in science and technology, but were also required to admit the full ability range, in reality had a mean score above average and a much smaller ability range. Secondary schools in more densely urbanised settings had a narrower ability range although the authors suggested this might be as much to do with residential segregation as school choice. These schools also had much lower mean intake scores which was to be expected given what was known about ‘the concentration of poverty and disadvantage in cities’ (Gibbons and Telhaj, 2007, p. 1300) The authors emphasise that they had not studied stratification based on income, race, social class or other demographic factors that might have changed.

The impact of residential segregation on differences between schools has been debated further. Segregation might be increased by admission policies even if there was no selection. Two-thirds of non-denominational comprehensives prioritise admissions from the local area which means the intake reflected residential segregation patterns. It might also lead to increased segregation if aspiring parents moved into the area (Coldron et al. 2010, p.29). Cheshire and Sheppard (2004, p.423) found evidence that house prices of family friendly homes increased in areas where secondary schools were historically seen to be better suggesting that economically privileged parents were prepared to move for perceived educational benefit. It has also been suggested that attempts to reduce inequity

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through engineering mixed residential neighbourhoods may not be an optimal solution for social and economic reasons relating to the economic and social capital associated with living in less deprived areas (Cheshire, 2007). Residential segregation in itself is therefore probably not the primary cause of educational segregation but reflects underlying social responses:

Rather, choice of where to live and choice of school are driven by the same mechanism of individualised hierarchical differentiation broadly correlated with volumes of economic, cultural and social resources. Solidarity with people recognised as like oneself operates powerfully to maintain both residential and educational separation (Southerton 2002). Residents of all backgrounds wish to relate to others who they perceive to be like them.

(Coldron et al., 2010, p.28) The large and increasing number of faith schools had different admission policies and influenced perceptions of the school (Coldron et al. 2010). They tended to have higher than average performance intake and a wider catchment area. It was suggested this was the result of admissions being school controlled and that they were more likely to draw from a restricted socio-economic group who attended church. Catholic schools however had a wider ability spread than other voluntary aided schools possibly reflecting the less affluent social profile of Catholics. Grammar schools were selective and had a lower deprivation rate measured by FSM uptake. It was suggested that ‘the proximate cause of segregation here was the greater education and wealth of middle class parents combined with a greater motivation arising from the fear of downward mobility’ (Coldron et al., 2010, p30). Residential segregation by ethnic grouping can also lead to some schools having students from predominantly one ethnic group (e.g. White British, Asian British)

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and segregation increased if students from other ethnic groups chose different schools for cultural and social reasons.

The evidence of segregation as the result of school specialisms was less clear. Specialist schools have been introduced in the last ten years and now about 90% of schools have at least one specialist area that can influence their curriculum priorities (Davies et al. 2009). There was some evidence that schools select less than 5% of students by specialism (West and Hind, 2003) but there was little conclusive evidence that this led to more segregation of student populations (Davies et al. 2008).

Access to NPD/PLASC data enabled analysis of the segregation that exists between types of school and whether it increased as a result of the choice and diversity policies. Many critics of these policies asserted that the 1988 Education Reform Act would increase diversity and segregation in schools, while proponents argued that better information and changes to admission regulations would allow all parents to make better choices and decrease segregation (Coldron et al. 2010). The research evidence was inconclusive partly because there were significant methodological debates that will be discussed further later (Gorard, 2009; Allen and Vignoles, 2007). It was suggested that between 1989 and 1995 segregation as measured by Free School Meals fell but rose again from 1997 to 2001 and subsequently stabilised or fell slightly up to 2005. Academies were introduced by New Labour to improve the performance and change the social mix of ‘failing’ schools usually in inner city locations but there was disagreement about whether performance increased and they have become less segregated. The Audit Office (2010) using Free School Meals

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measures suggested segregation was being reduced but was still higher than in other schools. Burgess and Allen (2010) challenged this finding by comparing the numbers of students in the lowest performance quartile and suggested that it showed little change over time.

While the evidence overall for increased segregation in schools as the result of the choice and diversity agenda was inconclusive, segregated cohorts were still an enduring feature of schools. Gibbons and Telhaj (2007, p. 1301) commented on the disparity between schools: ‘the average ability of pupils going into the ‘best’ comprehensive schools is some 30 percentiles of the pupil ability distribution above the average ability in the worst’. They suggest that these differences reflect residential segregation, but that the disparity also fuels much of the speculation and comment about school performance. Another analysis of segregation exploring the reasons why segregated schooling persists suggests that:

Ultimately the drivers of segregated schooling are in the fundamental wish of individuals and families to optimise their social position given the resources at their disposal. While this is shared by parents of all backgrounds, existing inequalities in social position and wealth largely determine different

approaches to and returns on engagement with choice of school. The great social distance between the most advantaged and the least, the benefits of solidarity and the effects of social policing lead the majority of both groups to opt for segregated schooling.

(Coldron et al., 2010, p.32)

An additional factor in the school diversity and choice debate was that alongside the state funded system there was a small (7%) independent ‘public school’ system which was privately financed and ‘cream skimmed’ the state sector. The effects geographically were uneven - for example 13% of students in Central London were educated in private schools

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(Gibbons and Telhaj, 2007, p.1287) and the proportions were higher or lower elsewhere. Differential regional patterns of education in independent schools had been identified with higher numbers in the South and differential growth in the period 1977-86 (Bradford, 1990). Suggested reasons for these changes were dissatisfaction with schools in Greater London and more people in the south being ‘receptive to private forms of consumption’ rather than class differences.

The conclusion to this section of the literature review is that the diverse range of publicly funded schools was best understood by analysing the geographical and historical

conditions that influenced their individual development. Many of the categories used to compare schools by national government ignored the variations that existed between schools and the differences in the intake that was related to place and space, especially as the result of residential segregation. It was clear there was no such thing as a ‘bog-

standard comprehensive’ (Campbell, quoted in Ball, 2008) but instead a diverse group of schools that reflected the communities from which they were drawn.