Calls for 'highly selective' primary schools to change ways

The ten per cent most selective schools do not accurately reflect their neighbourhood demographic, according to the social mobility think-tank the Sutton Trust, which has published a report called Caught Out, days ahead of National Primary Offer Day.

Poorer families are left with a more limited choice of school because of intake criteria that favours better- off families through a preference for those who follow a religion, the report claims.

The research also reveals the local authority areas with the highest proportion of such schools include Blackpool, Westminster, and Hammersmith and Fulham.

The trust's proposals for a fairer system include giving more priority to pupil premium pupils in all schools, including faith schools.

A spokesman said, 'This could be hurting poorer children’s chances of success. There are correlations between a school’s performance and its social selectivity.'

Just one per cent of schools in the bottom ten per cent for performance in Key Stage 2 tests are also in the top ten per cent most socially-selective schools.

As a way of choosing which pupils to offer places to when oversubscribed, selective primaries tend to use more complex criteria than the typical school.

The spokesman added, 'These are often faith-based, which gives greater choice of school to churchgoing families, who are more likely to be of a higher social class.

'Outside London particularly, this appears to be a result of faith-based admissions policies in voluntary aided, particularly Catholic, schools in these towns.

'Proximity to the school tends to fall relatively far down the list of oversubscription criteria for these schools, as they prioritise baptised children living further away.'

The report authors, Dr Rebecca Allen and Meenakshi Parameshwaran of Education Datalab, found considerable variation in the extent to which primary school intakes diverge from their local neighbourhoods.

The top ten per cent most socially selective primary schools have a proportion of disadvantaged pupils that are at least 9.2 percentage points different from the communities they serve. There are 1,576 schools in this category, attended by 310,000 pupils.

The report recommends:

• schools should consider the impact of their oversubscription criteria on disadvantaged pupils and prioritise them accordingly;

• religious schools should make more places open to the local community with simple and consistent admissions criteria that are fair to all;

• to prevent cheating by parents and poor practice in schools, the Schools Admissions Code must be properly enforced.

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl, said, 'Disadvantaged young people should have the same chance of accessing the best state school in their neighbourhood as their better off neighbour.

'We have previously documented social selectivity in secondary schools, but today’s findings warn us that primary school admissions are far from a level-playing field.

'We need to make sure that oversubscribed schools do more to prioritise pupils from disadvantaged homes and the Schools Adjudicator does more to prevent parents from gaming the system.'

Dr Allen, director of Education Datalab, said, 'There are many benefits to giving parents a choice over where their child is educated, but our new research shows that that there is not equity in access to many primary schools, either because higher-income families are advantaged in their ability to exercise choice or because their admissions criteria favour certain pupils.'

Previous Sutton Trust research has shown that the majority of successful comprehensives and grammar schools have significantly lower intakes of disadvantaged pupils than are present in their communities.