School Admissions Process

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. We have something in common. I was recruited to the Labour movement in the mid-1980s by someone who I think was a great mentor to both of us—Alf Morris, who was the MP for Wythenshawe between 1964 and 1997. The reason I bring that up is that 2020 is the 50th anniversary of his seminal private Member’s Bill that became the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which was the first such legislation anywhere on the planet and has influenced legislators all over the world in recognising the rights of disabled people. I look forward later in the year to a calendar of events celebrating his great work. It is therefore a real pleasure to serve under you, Ms Buck.

I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing the debate. She is an absolutely tremendous advocate for Edmonton and Enfield and she spoke with real passion and power about the situation of her constituent John. There is nothing more powerful than bringing the real-life lived experience of your constituents to the heart of democracy in Westminster, and she has done that with aplomb and passion today.

This has been an interesting-themed week. We had a very similar debate on exclusions yesterday, when a number of London MPs in particular were talking about how exclusions ruin the life chances of young people. They fall into criminal gangs and county lines behaviours and are lost to our system, for a number of reasons. It is interesting that we are back here today talking about admissions.

I have been badly impacted by the market-driven admissions system in my own constituency. Just today, the Secretary of State has backed a decision to close Newall Green High School in my constituency. I am absolutely outraged by that, having written to the Secretary of State and the Prospere Learning Trust; they together have made the decision to close the high school. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with both parents and pupils to try to maintain the viability of the school—not just recently, but over a number of years. It is short-sighted on the part of the Government. They have rejected sensible, pragmatic proposals from Manchester City Council, which wanted to keep the school open and was prepared to put substantial revenue into the project. The city council has not had the courtesy of a response from the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) talked eloquently about this issue in his intervention: why are councils so driven away from the schools process? They are responsible for spatial frameworks, responsible for admissions to a degree and responsible for the welfare of every child, but we do not seem to think that they are fit to be part of the school system. I will continue campaigning against the unjust decision in my constituency.

Schools matter. Pupils’ academic outcomes are heavily influenced by the school that they attend. Academic achievement in turn strongly influences life chances. The effectiveness of the school that a student attends can have lifelong implications. All state-funded schools in England are subject to the school admissions code. Schools and local authorities must follow the statutory guidance when carrying out duties relating to school admissions. That should mean that all school admission policies are fair and transparent, but that is often not the case, as has been pointed out today. Some schools act as their own admissions authority and so set their own criteria, subject to the code. Voluntary-aided and foundation schools have been able to do that for some time, but the rapid expansion of academies under this Government means that thousands of schools can now determine their own admissions policy.

The problems are obvious. First, there is no single body responsible for ensuring that admission policies comply with the code. Secondly, schools can engage in back-door selection. On paper the admissions policy looks compliant; in practice a school may be unlawfully selecting or rejecting certain pupils. Schools may do that because they believe that certain pupils might adversely impact on their academic results and hence their position in the school league tables, with knock-on impacts on their Ofsted results. That was a key argument yesterday when we talked about school exclusions. Tens of thousands of young people are off-rolled annually from our schools. In fact, evidence from the Education Policy Institute that I cited yesterday showed that 69,000 young people were excluded from school in 2017 alone. We do not know the reasons why. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton makes the point that schools should be responsible, even when children are off-rolled or excluded, for their future welfare. That has been clearly stated in our party policy, but has the support of many hon. Members on both sides of the House.

Selective admissions such as those I have described result in discrimination against certain categories of pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, those with English as an additional language and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children from disadvantaged families attend schools that have a much lower proportion of children achieving the benchmark of at least good grades at GCSE. The average score for that cohort was 59%. That is 6.9 percentage points below the cohort of non-poor pupils. It is a substantial difference.

My hon. Friend referred to the research in a Sutton Trust report released today. It states that half of all secondary school headteachers say that social segregation is a problem in state schools, yet more than 40% of them do not consider the socioeconomic make-up of their communities when developing their admissions policies. When children are allocated to schools that are over-subscribed—higher performing schools—the criteria that they use often favour the wealthy. We have a system in which whoever can afford to live near the good school has a much higher chance of getting in. That results in high levels of socioeconomic segregation across our school estate.

I welcome the second report that the Sutton Trust has published, which makes several detailed and considered proposals for dealing with the injustices of our current system. It shows that there is clear support for a review of admission policy, which would be overseen most effectively by local authorities. Through that approach, a level of coherence, fairness and trust could be restored to how we provide for our young people locally in their schools.

I will finish by asking the Minister to now look again at school admissions policies and address the segregation to enable a more mixed and balanced student population in our schools and to truly level the playing field for our nations’ young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

We are also concerned about the increase in the number of children in elective home education. That is why we issued a call for evidence on home education and we are looking at it carefully. We have consulted on the proposal to create a register of children not in school. A range of factors have led to the increase, but in my judgment, it is not due to a shortage of high-quality school places in our school system.

As of 1 February, 508 free schools are open, providing 275,000 school places. In 2019, the top seven of the top 15 progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools, and three of those schools were in the top five: Eden Boys’ School in Birmingham, Eden Girls’ School in Coventry and the Michaela Community School. Each of those successful schools teaches a stretching knowledge-rich curriculum, has a strong approach to behaviour management and is committed to high academic standards.

This morning I visited West London Free School, for the second or third time. It has an excellent quality of education and superb behaviour. I was hugely impressed by what I saw. There were very high quality lessons in music and arts. Over 80% of pupils there enter the EBacc combination of GCSEs. Eden Boys’ School and Eden Girls’ School were opened by Star Academies, which has grown through the free schools programme from running a single school in the north-west to running 28 schools across the country. Ark John Keats Academy is an outstanding open free school. In 2019 its progress 8 score was well above average at 0.76 and 82% of students entered the EBacc.

At Michaela Community School, 84% of pupils were entered for the EBacc, and in its first set of GCSE results, the school reported that more than half of all grades awarded were level 7 and above, which is equivalent to A and A*. That school serves a very disadvantaged community. The London Academy of Excellence is a free school sixth form in east London that was set up in collaboration with seven independent schools. In 2019, the school had an average A-level progress score well above average. It recently reported that 37 students received offers to study at Oxford and Cambridge. King’s College London Mathematics School is a specialist maths free school. In 2019, 100% of its pupils achieved an A or A*.

[Mike Kane]

We are having a debate on admissions. I think the Minister has strayed some way off his brief. Perhaps his civil servants have given him the wrong speech today. Perhaps he could get back to addressing admissions.

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

Please stay on the topic of debate.