The best, the worst and the average: secondary school choice and education performance in East London

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether the distance between school and the pupil’s home is related to social background in a six borough area of East London. Also investigated is the extent to which schools in the area perform in line with expectations on the basis of the social composition of their intake. The research involves analysis of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) to which geodemographic codes supplied by Experian have been attached. We demonstrate that the six schools in the area which achieved the highest average points score at GCSE recruit pupils widely from within the area (and to a lesser extent outside), whilst the lowest performing six schools recruit from much more narrowly defined catchment areas. In terms of school performance, we show that whilst we might expect schools to perform better as they become more distant from inner East London and nearer to the M25, this is not necessarily the case. In our conclusions we argue that these data support the claims made on the basis of ethnographic data about the class nature of school selection and parental choice.

Notes

1. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the ESRC (grant no. RES‐000‐23‐0793) for the project ‘Gentrification, education and ethnicity in East London’.

2. It should be noted that all analyses of PLASC in this paper are based on pupils with no special educational needs and are based on average capped scores as calculated by the DfES; there are a few schools lying outside the study area which are accounted for by pupils from within the area studying at these schools where they meet certain inclusion criteria—catchment areas for individual schools often extend into the neighbouring authority. The PLASC data relate to 2003.

3. One of the authors of the present article built the initial Acorn system and has also been responsible since 1985 for the build and the decennial updating of Mosaic, now probably the market leader.

4. The notion of ‘choice’, often used by economists and free marketers, implies the idea of free and unconstrained choice. This is generally very unrealistic. Almost all choices are made within the framework of existing options and, outside the price mechanism, a set of rules and regulations within which (and often how) choices have to be made. In many ways this is akin to Giddens ‘structure + agency’ concept. Agency is clearly important, but it takes place within a set of structures, rules and regulations which can vary over time and space. Most choices are constrained to a greater or lesser extent and the important thing is not what people would ideally like if they had unconstrained choice, but how they make their decisions within the structure of constraints, the options available and with the resources they have. It is interesting to reflect back on a paper by Peter Saunders published many years ago called ‘They make the rules’. For these reasons, in relation to the debate on education, we prefer the term parental ‘decisions’ or decision‐making rather than choices. In the housing literature in the 1970s the big discovery was the notion of constraint. Some people have more choice than others and some have very little choice. In this situation the important thing is to examine the structure of constraints.