SCHOOL ADMISSION PROCEDURES, PUPIL ACHIEVEMENT AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION

Early day motion 1859, tabled 4 November 2003 by Frank Dobson (Labour). Signed by 82 members.

That this House welcomes the launch of Comprehensive Future, the campaign to modernise secondary school admission procedures; welcomes the Government's revised Code of Practice on School Admissions; further welcomes the publication of the Audit Commission/Ofsted Report, The Influence of School Place Planning on School Standards and Social Inclusion; notes the criticism of current admission procedures contained both in the June 2002 report from the Council of Tribunals and in the July 2002 report issued by the Schools Adjudicator; further notes the evidence of abuse of current procedures documented in research recently published by the London School of Economics; regrets that more children in England now face overt and covert selective admission procedures to secondary school than in 1997; recognises the impracticality of the 1998 Grammar School Ballot Regulations; further regrets the denial of parental choice intrinsic to admission systems in which schools select children; is aware of the growing body of evidence linking selective systems of secondary education to lower overall levels of pupil achievement and higher levels of social exclusion; and calls on the Government (a) to request Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools to conduct an inquiry into the relationship between selective admission procedures, pupil achievement and post-16 participation rates and (b) to request the Social Exclusion Unit to conduct a parallel inquiry into the relationship between the structures of secondary education and levels of social exclusion.

Signatures by party: Labour 74, Labour/Co-operative 5, Liberal Democrat 2, Plaid Cymru 1.