More Good School Places

An agenda for reform

Author: James O'Shaughnessy and Charlotte Leslie   |   01/10/2005

There are two challenges for anyone designing a system of reform for English schools. The first is to look at how rapidly to expand the supply of good school places. This might be achieved by:

• Encouraging new schools to set up within the state sector
• Enabling good schools to expand
• Bringing independent schools providing education at or below the state cost into the state sector
• Effectively and swiftly turning around failing schools
• Deregulating state schools to allow them to innovate and improve.

However, even if all of these initiatives are undertaken it will take some time for the number of good school places to expand. During this transition period good schools will be forced to ration their places, as happens now. Experience shows us that children from disadvantaged backgrounds lose out disproportionately when this happens. This presents the second challenge – to ensure a fairer distribution of the existing limited supply of good school places. This might be achieved by:

• Providing extra funding for disadvantaged pupils
• Providing fairer admissions arrangements.