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Abstract
Policy discourses in support of school reform in England have linked the objective of raising standards with that of tackling inequality. The assumption that a single policy strategy can tackle both objectives simultaneously is problematic. In this article, I examine issues of equity by studying admissions policy and practice. Drawing on a programme of interviews with the staff of a secondary school in England, I provide evidence of the interplay between policy discourses, the values and ethos of the school, and the professional practice of those who work there. Discussions and debates about the school’s admissions policy reveal cognitive and ethical dilemmas relating to equity and educational inclusion, particularly in the case of children with special educational needs and disabilities. In a policy context that requires schools to operate in a regulated, competitive market, school leaders may reluctantly restrict opportunities for children who already face physical, educational and social challenges.
Introduction
The research reported in this article is drawn from the Academisation Studies in Schools (AcSiS) Project, which uses ethnographically based investigations to explore the daily reality of school reform in England. I focus on school admissions as a site where concerns about equity and educational inclusion interplay with those about market positioning and educational outcomes. Recent school reforms have been discursively constructed as a means, not just of improving the quality of education, but also of doing social justice work. For the Labour Government (1997–2010), those were the core objectives of the Academies programme, which, it claimed, would improve schools in deprived areas (DfES, 2004, 2005). The academy school was typically a failing urban school replaced by a ‘turned around’ school with new leadership and governance. Under the Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 to the present day), with the academy school definition broadened as part of the drive to take all schools out of local authority (LA) control, matters of equity and social justice continue to be associated with systemic school improvement:
(We are) promoting social justice by supporting vulnerable children and challenging schools which fail to improve. (DFE, 2010)
Our aim over the next 5 years is to spread the excellence in many parts of the country to all as a matter of social justice (DfE, 2016a: 73).
This is linked with a claim of mutuality, according to which, instead of being part of LA networks, school governors and leaders should join multi-academy trusts (MATs), and achieving this is ‘a matter of social justice’ (DfE, 2016b: 76).
The contribution of this article is to report on an aspect of school reform where the claims of policy-makers about equity and social justice are problematized. I use the case of school admissions to argue that in an increasingly marketized landscape of provision, selection and the power to select are understood by those in leadership roles as vital mechanisms to secure advantage over competing schools. Considerations of social justice, if they are acknowledged at all, are seen as of secondary significance to market-positioning and survival. This is important, first, because it illuminates the cognitive and ethical dilemmas faced by school leaders and practitioners, who enact reform without having the power to influence its outcome; and second, because it provides evidence that vulnerable children are at risk of being further marginalized in a competitive, marketized school system. The methodological contribution of the AcSiS Project is to follow in real time the process of academy conversion, so that changes in plans, circumstances and, most importantly, the views, responses and interactions of policy actors can be investigated. The research reported in this article is based on two-stage interviews with 20 participants employed in or associated with a school in England. In the year between the two rounds of interviews, the school debated and resolved the question of its change of governance within an ‘academized’ system.
School reform serving social justice
For almost 20 years, official government policy documents have set out successive iterations of academy programmes and policies (for example, DfEE, 2000; DfES, 2005; DCSF, 2009; DfE, 2010). These publications have rationalized system reform by referring to social justice, eliding the objectives of ‘raising standards’ with those of tackling inequality, and associating both objectives with the need to compensate for the deficiencies of previous governance arrangements. Thus, for example:
poorly performing schools reinforce inequality and disadvantage. (DfEE, 2000: 4)
Academies are now addressing entrenched school failure in our most deprived areas and are starting to transform educational opportunity for thousands of our young people who need it most. (DfES, 2005: 15)
the weakest schools…are systematically failing some of the country’s most vulnerable children. (DfE, 2010: 56)
‘we are in a poor area and we have some very challenging parents and students. Sometimes it is what primary school has not done that we then have to implement’. (middle leader quoted in National College, 2011: 55)
This Government is dedicated to making Britain a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few…But for too many children in England, a good school remains out of reach (DfE, 2016b: 5).
This narrative has been echoed by research studies commissioned and/or conducted by bodies that promote the concept of an ‘academized’ school system. Using the form and structure of academic articles, these studies promote school reform as a solution to social-justice challenges. They present a negative picture of predecessor schools that have ‘lost focus’ (Davies, 2006: 7), requiring transformational principals who must have ‘a commitment to…righting the wrongs of the past’ (Davies, 2006: 6, 13–14; see also Hill et al., 2012: 55–58). Where specific policies with implications for equity and social justice are discussed, they are often presented as operational processes, as in this example:
(There are) three core dimensions to being a chain. The first is having a shared ethos, vision and set of values. The second relates to having a series of managerial systems in place governing the operation of the chain. These would include admissions, attendance and behaviour management standards…The third dimension relates to the pedagogical approach deployed across the chain (Hill et al., 2012: 91).
The reference here to admissions policies is of specific relevance to the research reported in this article. I argue that controlling admissions is an important component of a managerial system designed to seek advantage in a competitive local school market. Schools may go as far as ‘manipulating admissions, rather than exercising strong leadership’ (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 7) – an apparently binary choice which ignores any ethical dimension. The question of admissions policies is problematic in this body of literature. The Pearson/RSA (2013) report, despite a title, ‘Getting the best from an academized system’, that indicates ideological support for that system, recognizes that educational inequalities in England, already among the most socially segregated of OECD countries, may be exacerbated by academization (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 61). It presents evidence of academies employing methods of covert selection (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 65) and changing admissions policies to skew their intake (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 66). It identifies pupils with special educational needs, including behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, as being particularly at risk. The report recommends the establishment of an independent, quasi-judicial appeals service: clearly, self-regulation will not be enough to ensure that ‘an increasingly academized system is fair and equally accessible to children and young people from all backgrounds’ (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 5). Indeed, some schools need ‘a positive reminder…of the mission of state education’ (Pearson/RSA, 2013: 85; see also Larsen et al., 2011: 116–117).
A second group of literatures takes a critical perspective on inclusion, exclusion and social marginality. Rather than identifying a need for measures to encourage fairness within an academized system, here the system itself is problematized as encouraging injustice and exclusion. When schools are reshaped as businesses, the resultant leadership models may deny equal opportunities and replicate social unfairness (Beckett, 2007: 129; Courtney, 2015; Gunter, 2012: 121). The claims to be combating educational inequalities, made by both Labour (1997–2010) and Coalition/Conservative (2010 to the present day) administrations, are challenged with evidence that the associated policy developments are reinforcing rather than alleviating those inequalities (Gillard, 2007; Gunter and McGinity, 2014; Hutchings et al., 2016; Leathwood and Hayton, 2002). Discourses of social justice may be underpinned by narratives of social mobility and equality of opportunity, or by those of parity and exclusion (Francis, 2014: 442). In either case, a competitive regime where children’s standards of achievement and development can be measured, reported and compared leads the ‘equality’ discourse to focus on a business agenda based on performance indicators and ‘narrowing gaps’ (Robertson and Hill, 2014: 167).
School reform provides new opportunities for faith groups, particularly the Church of England (CofE), by enabling them to increase their power and influence over the education system. In individual schools and across MATs, the CofE can adapt admissions policies in order to ‘select by faith’ – for example, by reserving a percentage of places in a school for the children of families who worship regularly. This can reduce choices for families, increase opportunities for selection, and narrow the scope of the school curriculum (Beckett, 2007: 67–90; TUC, 2014).
Empirical research into recent school reform in England has concentrated mainly on whether it raises standards, whether it narrows achievement gaps between groups of pupils, whether it offers diversity, whether it marks a return to traditional values, and whether it frees schools from bureaucracy. Less attention has been given to matters of social justice. This may be because much research of this type is conducted by insiders reporting on their success (for example, Daniels, 2011; Macaulay, 2008; Pike, 2010) or commissioned by government or sponsors (Davies, 2006; DCSF, 2009; DfE, 2010; Larsen et al., 2011; National College, 2011; Pearson/RSA, 2013). These accounts may be critical within the spirit of self-evaluation, but they do not question the rationale for system reform or the ideological principles on which the academies programme, for example, is based. I therefore contribute through this article evidence from an empirical project that problematizes some of the core concepts underpinning recent and current school reform in England, using the case of admissions policies to support my argument.
Methodology
This article draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with staff in a secondary school (anonymized as St Clement’s) in England. Fifteen staff were each interviewed twice, with an interval of 1 year between the interviews. I conducted similar paired interviews with the Chair of Governors and senior officers of the CofE Diocese. The first interviews took place soon after the school governors started the process of consultation, with a view to the school becoming a ‘converter’ academy linked to the CofE. The second round of interviews followed the governors’ decision not to proceed with their academization plan, but instead to change status from a school controlled by the LA (voluntary-controlled – VC) to one governed by the Diocese (voluntary-aided – VA). The important difference of VA status would be that the school, rather than the LA, would be legally responsible for the land, buildings, staff contracts and admissions policy. It is the last of those responsibilities that provides the empirical evidence to support the argument in this article. The second interviews were particularly significant because, as I shall show, the arguments for ‘freedoms’ persist even when the structural change has a different name.
During the period of data generation, I was working with St Clement’s as the LA education adviser. The Head Teacher and Chair of Governors were fully supportive of this separate research activity, agreed to be interviewed, and gave me full access to documentation, meetings and individual staff. The other participants were two members of the senior leadership team, four middle leaders, six other teachers and two members of the support staff. All interviewees were recruited through an agent, and their participation was voluntary.
The issue of pupil admissions was not specifically identified in the research questions around which the AcSiS project was established. It emerged during the data generation and in the coding of interview transcripts, and has prompted the writing of this article.
Structural reform justified by autonomy over admissions
The evidence from the AcSiS project is that most of the interviewees considered a change of governance arrangements to be a positive and necessary move for the school. In 2014 they were in favour of academization; even those who were ideologically opposed to the academies policy saw conversion as inevitable. In 2015 they agreed with both the new strategy – the change to VA status – and the rationale behind it. There were two main reasons for their favourable response to the governors’ proposals. The first was that the academy trust would be led by the CofE, the second was their high level of confidence in the Head Teacher. Both the Diocesan officers and the Head Teacher had convinced them of the advantages of a change of governance status. In 2014, three main reasons were given in favour of the proposal for St Clement’s to become an academy school. First, there would be financial benefits, which would result in more resources for teaching and learning. Second, by forming a MAT, St Clement’s could establish formal links with local primary schools, with anticipated benefits for curriculum continuity and, importantly, recruiting pupils from those schools. Third, the school would have increased autonomy over a range of management policies, including the admissions policy. During the year of this project, the proposal to convert to academy status encountered obstacles, including the realization that it would bring no financial benefits, and the refusal of primary schools to join a MAT. The new plan to change to VA status was reported to staff by the Head Teacher shortly before the second round of interviews. In these second interviews the staff were as positive about the new proposal as they had been about the previous one. Their reasons now, however, were almost entirely based on the single remaining ‘advantage’, relating to control over the school’s admission policy.
In a VA school, the admissions authority is not the LA, but the school governing body. The majority of governors are appointed by the faith school authority – in this case, the CofE Diocese. There was a strong consensus among interviewees that additional powers over admissions were essential, because the LA failed to recognize that the school was full and oversubscribed. Now that St Clement’s was one of only five LA-maintained secondary schools among the 15 academies, it was ‘at the mercy of the LA’ over admissions (middle leader). It was ‘a LA decision for us to take students who we may not necessarily have chosen to’ (support staff member). The change needed to be made swiftly, otherwise ‘in the meantime how many will they try to push on us?’ (middle leader). The Diocesan position on admissions appeared to change between the first and second interviews, from:
Church of England provision is about ‘all are welcome’: we don’t have to have Church criteria in our admissions policy…in diverse urban areas that’s just not an applicable criterion to have. (Interview 1: Diocese Director)
to:
Going VA will enable the governors to have a little more control over their admissions…they could change their admissions policy to take 5 per cent of their children from worshipping Church families perhaps in the future, you know, if you get one or two frankly more middle-class kids coming in, you have more of a comprehensive school there, potentially. I think you can brand it in that way. (Interview 2: Assistant Diocese Director)
The views of the staff varied on the possibility of introducing ‘worship-related’ admissions criteria, with some, albeit a minority, advocating that priority should be given to children with ‘a Church of England background’ (senior leader).
There was a specific concern among governors and staff that maintaining the current number of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) would overstretch limited resources and would put at risk the school’s place in published performance tables as well as any future inspection outcome. Autonomy over admissions would permit St Clement’s to limit the number of children with SEND – for example, to a maximum of 20 per cent of the intake. The associated dilemma was summarized by a member of the support staff, based on the Head Teacher’s staff briefing:
The leadership team and governors write the admissions criteria for a VA school, so they can set restrictions on the number of SEND pupils that we take. Obviously, we are a focus provision and a recognized centre of good practice as far as SEND is concerned, so in no way would we want to start discriminating down that line. But we don’t want to be in a situation where we’re just getting more and more SEND children, which is going to make our targets ever more difficult to achieve. (Support staff member)
Attitudes towards the admissions policy were strongly influenced by the regulatory regime of published performance tables and the school inspection framework. The commitment of the school’s staff to educational inclusion was outweighed by the fear that, with a cohort of which 30 per cent of children had SEND, it would be virtually impossible to meet government targets for attainment and progress at age 16 – as the Head Teacher put it, ‘meeting the benchmarks, whatever they are’. The consequence might be exposure as a failing school, both by the publication of results in league tables and by the judgment of an inspection regime based on performance indicators set at a national level.
A further factor was the awareness that St Clement’s operated in a competitive market. There was no fear that the school might be at risk because of lack of numbers: St Clement’s was oversubscribed, with local projections indicating that there would be a local shortage of school places within the next five years. The anxiety for staff derived from the need to position St Clement’s in the local market, where it was surrounded by academy schools, which, they believed, had generous marketing budgets and were advantaged simply by having the word Academy as part of their branding. The Chair of Governors spoke of rumours of ‘certain academies in the area offering certain things to attract pupils’. Because league tables were regarded as more powerful marketing devices than pupil satisfaction, staff well-being or word-of-mouth, it was important to ensure that ‘standards’ continued to improve. Controlling admissions would be essential in order to protect the school’s position:
With the other academies being so stringent with their admissions policies, they are selecting certain groups of pupils and not selecting others. We’ve seen a sharp increase of our SEND pupils, and I believe that is because of admissions policies happening in other schools, so we need to have our own admissions policy that is inclusive but also we’re not taking what other schools are rejecting. (Teacher)
The school should not be a ‘dumping-ground’ [a term used independently by four participants], where ‘we’re becoming a special needs sink hole for the Borough’ (one participant), and ‘we are becoming inundated with special needs children’ (Head Teacher).
Those children might have difficulty finding places elsewhere because they were newly arrived in the area, because other schools were deemed to be full, because they had been excluded, or because they had been advised by other schools or by the LA that St Clement’s was well resourced for pupils with SEND and had a good reputation for meeting their needs. One participant, a head of year, had first-hand knowledge of such processes:
Some schools do this a little bit underhanded…if a child has been severely misbehaving, some heads will say to the parent: ‘right, there’s a transfer form, maybe they would be better having a chance somewhere else’. So instead of going through the panel, where they sit round a table and discuss children who have been excluded, that’s all sort of disappearing. So a child and a parent would maybe turn up at the door with their letter to say ‘we’ve been advised to try a new start here’. (Middle leader)
Articulating cognitive and ethical dilemmas
This study reveals a contrast between the general acceptance of the major changes proposed by the governors – where the research questions anticipated some dissent or resistance – and the dilemmas caused by some of the measures associated with those changes. In the interviews, I did not ask specifically about admissions policy. That matter was raised by four participants in the first round of interviews. Between the two interviews it had evidently become a major subject for discussion within the school, because all 15 participants spoke about it in their second interview. They were determined to assure me that, as one interviewee put it, ‘the issue is not that we don’t want to work with those pupils but we simply don’t have the capacity’ (Teacher). Nevertheless, there was strong, if reluctant, general agreement that admissions must be in some way ‘controlled’. The overwhelming reason for this was to do with the accountability regime. Judgments made by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate in England, were a particular preoccupation. The overall effectiveness of the school, as judged by Ofsted, had recently risen from Requiring Improvement (inspection grade 3 of 4) to Good (grade 2). Senior leaders now felt pressure to improve it to Outstanding (grade 1):
One of the main issues that we’re facing is that 29 per cent of our students have some form of SEND. Now with floor targets and the progress measures, key performance indicators, when you’re talking about a significant number of students like that, it’s going to become increasingly difficult year-on-year to maintain our results, maintain our status, maintain our Good, potentially even Outstanding grade hopefully in the near future. So it is important that we have fair admissions criteria. (Senior leader)
There was just one dissenting voice:
I don’t like this idea that it makes us able to be more selective, this VA process. A school of this standard with such modern facilities, such accessibility, why shouldn’t we be taking more children with special educational needs and why do we need to put a cap on that? I don’t think that it’s a particularly good message to be sending out to everyone: we’ve got this but we want to choose the kids who come here. (Teacher)
Reluctance and discomfort were widespread, as voiced by the Head Teacher:
I think you know me well enough to know I’m deeply committed to inclusion. But it’s a case of protecting what we do well and not having the straws that break the camel’s back so it detracts from the quality of what we offer’. (Head Teacher)
This sounds awful, but we are an inclusive school and that’s one of the things that attracted me to it, but with very few LA schools left, I wouldn’t want our school to become a dumping ground, so having greater autonomy over our admissions criteria would be appealing. (Senior leader)
I was rarely able to get a clear answer to two follow-up questions that I used with several interviewees. The first was: Which children will not get a place in future but do get one at the moment? The second was: Are you trying to recruit a different type of student? There were real contradictions here that were uncomfortable for the Head Teacher and staff. Only one interviewee was willing to give a clear answer, expressing some regret:
The demographic of this school has changed. When we were over in the old site we were very much white working-class, those type of students, very few middle-class students. Now there are significantly more middle-class students and the demographic is changing, which is changing the way parents are interacting with the school, the way students are interacting with teachers, and we’re having to manage this change. I preferred it when it was the other way. (Middle leader)
The frequent references to accountability were explicitly linked to a political agenda, ranging, for example, from the view of a teacher: ‘in this political climate, choice is a relative term, even if it’s only perceived choice. We’re going to be pushed at some point, regardless’, to that of the Head Teacher: ‘it looks like the Conservative Party are totally anti-inclusion, and I don’t think there’s a degree of support for kids with SEND, or an appreciation of what they need in terms of curriculum’.
I have focused on the members of one school community – teachers, support staff, governors and those in leadership positions – in order to examine how the requirements of structural and policy reforms interplay with the educational values and professional practice of those directly responsible for enacting those reforms. Individuals’ influence in matters of equity and educational inclusion is shaped by discourses of marketization and school effectiveness, and constrained by an accountability regime that supports those discourses.
Conclusion
This case of a school’s admissions policy reveals how teachers, other staff and those in leadership roles respond to change at organizational and personal level. The agency of those professionals is limited by the demands of the regulatory regime and market positioning. The insight into their assumption that outputs (examination results) are best achieved by controlling inputs (which children they admit) is given renewed significance by the recent proposals to increase opportunities for schools to select their pupils (DfE, 2016b). The data show that the fragmentation of the school system in England, which makes it increasingly difficult to plan school places coherently and equitably across LA areas, is marginalizing some of the most vulnerable groups of young people and their families, by placing good schools even further out of their reach.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Helen Gunter, Steve Courtney and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
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Author biography
Stephen M Rayner is a former secondary school teacher and adviser, who is now teaching and completing a professional doctorate at the University of Manchester.