'Fair Banding': A Totalitarian Proposal to Disguise Failing Schools?
On 1 October 2005, The Times reported that the government is planning to offer parents wider choice of secondary schools. This will be done by 'banding' children according to their performance in a new 11-plus exam, after which groups of specialist schools will offer places according to parental preference. The offers, however, would be skewed to ensure all schools take a similar proportion of children from up to nine ability bands. Eventually, it is planned that all secondary schools will be compelled to take an equal proportion of pupils from each ability band in order to ensure that every school has a truly 'comprehensive' intake.
The Times described the proposed new test as 'the first nationwide system of admission exams since the demise of the 11-plus.' It is intended to 'prevent wealthy middle class families monopolising the best secondary schools by buying houses within the catchment area'.
These plans for what is euphemistically termed 'fair banding' are supported by Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. Sir Cyril rejected claims that this was a new form of selection, saying: 'How can this be selection when the purpose is to ensure a comprehensive [ie all-ability] intake?' (Woolly thinking, Sir Cyril! Of course, it's selection, whether it's the top ability band, the bottom band, or all bands that are selected.)
Observations and comment:
If true – and it probably is – this middle or 'third way' solution to 'problems' caused by parental choice will reduce choice for most families. Following a series of Parliamentary Questions concerning the performance of the brightest pupils in different types of school, ministers and their supporters have been forced to acknowledge some uncomfortable realities: when the performance of the brightest pupils in independent, selective (grammar) and comprehensive schools is compared, each year over 16,000 bright youngsters in comprehensive schools fail to achieve their full potential, or the top grade exam results they deserve. Using questionable research by Professor David Jesson (which ignores the difference between exam results in 'hard' academic subjects and 'softer' subjects), Sir Cyril has responded by suggesting that this failure to reach full potential occurs because many comprehensive schools have less than 20 very bright pupils – the excuse being that, unless they have more than 20 bright pupils, such schools cannot offer bright pupils the opportunity to excel.
However:
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The 'fair banding' argument is dependent on the assumption that the exam results achieved at a particular school are largely due to the 'quality' of the school's intake. It takes no account of a school's ethos, the quality of its staff, or the quality of the teaching.
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These proposals are designed to help failing schools on the assumption that forcing clever pupils into them will improve their position in the league tables. But 'fair banding', which will allow only a small percentage of each ability range in each school, is grossly unfair to individual pupils. The proposals will give more power to bureaucrats to manipulate the intakes of individual schools. And they will increase the proportion of low-ability/badly behaved children in many high-performing schools. What happens, for example, when a high-performing school reaches its (small) quota of top-ability youngsters from its area, and a failing school a mile away has insufficient applicants from the top band? The remaining high-ability pupils from the good school's area will be forced into the failing school. But will the failing school have competent staff to teach them properly and ensure they achieve the exam results they deserve? And vice-versa: what happens when an apparently under-achieving school that does comparatively well for its less academic and special needs pupils reaches its quota of such pupils? Will the remainder be forced into a high-achieving school, where they may be out of their depth and fall further behind?
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Is it possible accurately to measure the aptitude and ability of an 11-year-old in each of the specialisms, such as business and enterprise, engineering, science and modern foreign languages, offered by Sir Cyril's specialist schools? Will parents or their children want to choose such specialisms before a child leaves primary school? What happens to children who don't want to specialise?
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Is Sir Cyril seriously proposing an additional 11-plus exam for all pupils at the end of their primary education? Or is this just alarmist spin to increase the acceptability of more moderate proposals, such as using existing Key Stage 2 tests to classify children in ability-bands when the government's White Paper on education is published within the next few weeks?
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These proposals are fundamentally totalitarian. The whole exercise is a crude attempt to disguise the fact that, after 8 years in power, the government and the Department for Education and Skills have failed to improve many failing schools. Quite simply, there are too few good state schools to satisfy parental demand. Instead of yet more social engineering, which will damage the life chances of thousands of children, shouldn't politicians confine their efforts to improving the individual schools that are failing and leave the good schools to get on with their work?
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Sir Cyril and Professor Jesson believe that the best method of ensuring very intelligent youngsters achieve their full potential is through the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth. Based at Warwick University, NAGTY organises week-end and summer schools for extremely bright pupils, which parents normally have to pay for. But how can a few attendances on NAGTY courses compensate for the daily stretching bright youngsters get at a good, full-time school?
These complicated proposals are an attempt to satisfy 'progressive' socialists who fear high-achieving schools; and education ministers who seek to disguise their failures. Yet if all young people are to be offered equal opportunities, the fundamental requirement is for more good schools, including more grammar schools. At present, that is the responsibility of the politicians who insist on controlling the system. But why should the requirements of politicians over-ride the requirements and aspirations of individual families and their children?
/Campaign for Real Education, 12 October 2005