Session Information
Contribution
Description: The recent White Paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All (2005)
has re-ignited debates about selection. In the past selection has often
been seen to be about admission policies. However, we argue in this
paper that how systems of selection are understood will be related to
the model of schooling that proponents in the debate espouse. We,
therefore, outline two ideal type models of schooling and then show how
these different models determine how the intended outcomes of selection
are derived from them. While these ideal typical models are useful for
heuristic purposes we need to evaluate the unintended or in the case of
a new model of schooling that has been advanced in the White Paper, the
likely consequences of these models in the real world. This involves
the development of a typology of different kinds of schools and their
associated selection systems. In particular, grammar schools,
comprehensive schools where zones or catchment areas determine
selection and comprehensive schools in a market driven by parental
choice and schools which have autonomy over finance, management,
pedagogy and selection – the type of Trust school outlined in the White
Paper. The interest in a return to a modern version of the grammar
school has been rekindled because of the perceived failure of
comprehensive schools to promote working class students through to
universities and especially the elite universities in the UK.
We, therefore, review the kinds of evidence that may enable us to judge
which system of selection is likely to be the fairest. Here we should
note that when ‘fairness’ is applied to outcomes it has various
meanings. For example, different systems of selection will involve
trade-offs between particular types of outcome. Outcomes here may
refer to the exam results attributable to different types of schooling
or the proportion of upwardly mobile working class students entering
university or indeed the elite universities such as Oxford or
Cambridge. For example, it may be that the grammar school system of
selection enabled a larger proportion of working class students to
enter the elite universities but that they had a polarising effect on
educational outcomes with those attending secondary modern schools
having depressed educational results. So systems of selection may also
tell us something about the policy priorities and trade-offs that
policy makers are prepared to entertain. In reviewing the evidence for
different kinds of schooling and their systems of selection we identify
where there are gaps in the evidence and in the final section of the
paper we outline how one particular research project that we are
engaged in can address some of the key outstanding research questions.
Methodology: Meta-Analysis and mixed quantitative and qualitative methods
Conclusions: That what constitutes the fairest type of selection will be context
dependent and that there are always trade-offs in relation to outcomes.
However, in the case of England, a comprehensive system with zoning or
catchment areas is likely to produce the fairest outcomes in terms of
exam results.
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