Parent choice doesn't raise education standards
Giving parents more choice over the schools their children attend does not raise educational standards, MPs were told today.
Experts cast doubt on Gordon Brown’s pledge to target failing schools, arguing that helping individual pupils who struggle in every school is the best way to improve results.
Dr Steve Gibbons, research associate at the London School of Economics, said increasing competition between schools led to more social segregation.
“There is some evidence that competition works but the bulk of the evidence internationally suggests that it doesn’t,” Dr Gibbons told the House of Commons schools select committee.
His own research focusing on primary schools found that giving parents more choice and encouraging schools to compete for pupils could increase divisions between rich and poor.
He said: “Generally, we found no evidence that the competition, the choice, made any real difference to performance.
“The down side was the fact that we found some evidence that it tends to increase inequality.
“In areas where you have a lot of choice amongst schools you get more stratification, more segregation across schools.”
His findings cast doubt on the logic behind promises by both Labour and the Conservatives to give parents more choice over the schools their children attend.
The Prime Minister has announced a new target to cut the number of failing secondary schools, where fewer than 30% of pupils score five C grades in their GCSEs, to zero by 2012.
But Dr Gibbons said focusing on whole schools was not the best way to improve results for pupils who struggled.
Targeting schools in a drive to raise standards was “a red herring”, he said.
Instead, efforts should focus on struggling pupils in all schools - not just those schools with the worst results.
Almost every school has some pupils who are in the bottom 5% for academic results, he said.
Tom Benton, senior statistician at the National Foundation for Educational Research, called for more studies of the teaching methods that work in the classroom.
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