Half of the places in Scotland’s high-attaining state schools should be allocated via a ballot, so that getting in stops being about whether families can afford homes in affluent areas, a new report argues.
The call comes today from the Sutton Trust - which aims to improve social mobility in the UK - and follows research showing that the secondary schools with the best grades in Scotland take just half the number of disadvantaged pupils as the national average.
Selective Comprehensives: Scotland looks at the top performing 70 state schools in Scotland - based on the proportion of pupils getting four A-C grades at National 5 (roughly equivalent to GCSE) - and says that just 8 per cent of pupils at these schools are registered for free school meals, compared with 16 per cent of all pupils in Scotland.
The research, carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research, concluded that the schools were reflective of their catchment areas. However, because “getting a place at a good school is key to getting on in life” the trust said that the “radical step” of using random ballots to admit pupils should be considered.
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The report also advocates making sure free transport is available for low-income families opting to send their children to out-of-catchment schools; taking social diversity into account when drawing up boundaries for catchment areas; and “raising standards” at schools in deprived areas.
School admissions and socioeconomic diversity
The report says: “The trust has long advocated in England in favour of greater use of random ballots in school admissions, de-emphasising the importance of proximity. Creation of an ‘inner’ catchment area, where families are entitled to a place, with an outer catchment area based on random allocation, could achieve a balance between proximity and fairness. It is crucial, however, that catchment areas are large enough in order to achieve a degree of socioeconomic diversity.”
The research is timely as it comes in the wake of the annual publication in newspapers of school league tables.
The tables - which were described by one Glasgow headteacher as “the annual public humiliation season” - are based on the percentage of pupils at Scottish schools gaining five or more Highers. They prompted an angry reaction from teachers on social media.
The Sutton Trust report says that the numbers of disadvantaged pupils attending the 70 top performing schools were very similar to the average levels of disadvantage in their catchment areas. While just over half (57 per cent) of top schools took slightly fewer disadvantaged pupils than their catchment area, over a third (39 per cent) took slightly more.
The research concluded, therefore, that while the social backgrounds of pupils in the top Scottish schools tended to reflect the local area, these schools were located in more affluent neighbourhoods. According to the research, around four out of five top performing schools are ranked in the 40 per cent most affluent areas of the country.
Sir Peter Lampl, founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “Getting a place at a good school is key to getting on in life. Yet the bottom line is that in Scotland your chances of doing that depends on your parents’ income and whether they can afford to live in an affluent area.
“This is why we want to see more use of ballots - where a proportion of places is allocated randomly - as well as a focus on improving the quality of teaching in all schools, particularly those in the most disadvantaged areas.”
Today’s report, which is published at the same time as similar analysis of schools in Wales, builds on earlier research by the Sutton Trust that looked at high performing secondary schools in England and how socially representative they are. In all three nations, the proportion of disadvantaged pupils at the best schools is around half of the average school, showing that their intakes are substantially different from the norm.
The reason for these differences varies between nations. In England and Wales, some of the difference is down to “social selectivity”. However, in Scotland the lack of disadvantaged pupils in the top performing schools is “almost entirely because they are located in more affluent neighbourhoods”.
