Shopping for schools

What an eye-opener it is that parents from our region are paying more than £5,000 extra for houses that will put them in the catchment areas of the best primary schools in order to ensure a place for their child. The economic pundits will find it reassuring that that some families are so mobile, against the backdrop of the difficult economic circumstances that make holding on to a home a challenge for others.

Of course, only some households can pull this off. The 34% of tenants across our region are certainly less likely to do this, despite having the same rights as anyone else to good primary education, being often unable to specify precisely where they will accept rented accommodation. Others would not dream of moving to an unknown area, having roots in their own neighbourhood, whether it is their church, an elderly parent or a sports club perhaps.

Such mobility has consequences for other schools. Those at the bottom of league tables will find their rolls falling and this would eventually lead to the school closing which will affect the wider community (the many), causing more disadvantage as a result than the benefits to the upwardly mobile (the few).

There are pitfalls in reading too much into a single year’s league tables, which do not spell out the whole story for each school. A parent may not know in advance what kind of school will suit their child best. School results often reflect the intake of a particular year or an outstanding teacher – and teachers eventually move on. However, a child spends seven or eight years in a primary school and there are likely to be stronger and weaker periods within the total time a child spends there.

With schools’ offering more than just teaching, they can transform whole communities. But by the Kennedy principle, it can be just as much “what you can do for your child’s school” as what it can do for children. Children’s development is coloured both by their experience within the school gates, their home life, wider family and community relationships. If there is chaos at home, even the best school in the world is not going to iron that out.

Ultimately, there are two contradictory forces at play within the education system: firstly aspiration and the push for higher standards from parents who compete with one another for places at good schools. The contrasting model would be to set high standards to be reached by all primary schools in every neighbourhood then allocate resources according to what is needed to produce those results. For example, struggling schools would attract salary supplements to teachers and class sizes reduced. A memorable TV advert from some years ago for tinned salmon said “It’s the ones John West reject, that makes John West the best”. If applied to education, it seems to reflect well a nonsensical situation, where high-demand and low-demand schools emerge. But, at the end of the day, it’s the children that matter, and getting left behind at primary school has far-reaching consequences for those children, their families, the communities where they live and the economy as a whole, which will also affect, therefore, the upwardly mobile shopping elsewhere for schools.