Aiming Higher: a response to the Government White Paper

The education system is failing the disadvantaged: substantial increases in government spending over the last decade have failed to raise the educational performance of the most disadvantaged children. Policymakers need to employ a range of other measures to try and rectify this problem. These include: greater choice for parents; an end to selection before sixth form; greater autonomy for schools; and better targeted funding for socially deprived children.

• Greater choice for parents: Parents should be able to petition to create new schools. A range of providers, including local authorities and charities, should be able to meet this demand. Increased contestability is an important method of creating accountability and more good school places. Local authorities should close failing schools promptly.
• An end to selection: School selection – whether overt by ability, or covert, in church schools – skews entry in favour of the better off. Specialist schools and academies should lose the right to select 10 per cent of their pupils by aptitude. State funded schools (notably voluntary-aided church schools) should not use faith-based criteria as a condition of admission. A ballot is the fairest mechanism for admissions, and has been used successfully in other choice-based systems. The admissions code should be legally binding on all state-funded schools.
• Greater autonomy for schools: School heads and boards of governors should be freed to focus on classroom activities by reducing the level of regulation and intervention from local authorities and national government. Flexibility at the school level should include working with staff to set terms and conditions, as well as deciding the curriculum, without having to seek special permission from the Secretary of State. The national curriculum should be restricted to core subjects, allowing schools to offer a range of choices appropriate to their student body.
• Better targeted funding: Extra funding to help disadvantaged students is not reaching those pupils and schools most in need. England should move to a transparent system of per pupil funding – based on comprehensible indicators such as free school meals, English as an additional language, and special educational needs – which channels extra cash to the most deprived.

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