All in the mix

Race, class and school choice

Bridget Byrne, Carla De Tona

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780719091155
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526139313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

All in the mix: Race, class and school choice considers how parents choose secondary schools for their children and makes an important intervention into debates on school choice and education. The book examines how parents talk about race, religion and class in the process of choosing. It also explores how parents' own racialised and classed positions, as well as their experience of education, can shape the way they approach choosing schools. Based on in-depth interviews with parents from different class and racialised backgrounds in three areas in and around Manchester, the book shows how discussions about school choice are shaped by the places in which the choices are made. It argues that careful consideration of choosing schools opens up a moment to explore the ways in which people imagine themselves, their children and others in social, relational space.

1

Unequal choosing

Introduction

The 1980 Education Act, introduced under Margaret Thatcher, included the requirement for local education authorities (LEAs) to consider parental preference more seriously. The notion of parental choice had been established under section 76 of the 1944 Education Act but had been implemented only on an ad hoc basis (Croft 2004). Commitment to parental preference was strengthened in legislation in 1988 and 1989, with the introduction of the principle of funding following the pupil introduced in 1988. For Gunter and McGinty, the Education Reform Act of 1988 established the ‘independent’ school as the ideal model, achieved through ‘removing the school from local democratic accountability by building on the self-managing school as a business in a competitive market place’ (Gunter and McGinty 2014: 300–1). This further enshrined the concept of ‘choice’ in schooling.¹ Choice, diversity and the market model of schooling have continued to shape policies around academies and free schools. This has also been driven by the desire to take schools out of local authority control on the assumption that schools are better if parents and other actors – for example, those engaged in business, religious groups or universities – play an active role in them. In fact, as the range of social actors brought into the educational sphere widened in the 2010s, it could be argued that the primacy of the parent as active citizen as well as consumer has slightly reduced. It was the 1980 Educational Act that confirmed the statutory right of parents to be elected as school governors, giving them an important role in the governing of schools as the control of schools was increasingly shifted from Local Authorities (LAs) to governing bodies. However, in May 2016 the then Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, suggested that, in a bid to get the best people with the right skills on governing bodies, there should no longer be the requirement to have at least two parents on governing bodies.²

Nonetheless, despite these changes, the primacy of parental choice in schooling as a discourse and policy objective remains. Parental choice has also been a key justification used for arguments around diversification of provision. A variety of schools are seen as offering more choice (despite, as we shall see below, the geographical limitations within which choices are made) (Wilkins 2010: 174). Over the last ten years, the logic of variety of provision has extended to the introduction of free schools and the shift in the policy around academies (West and Bailey 2013, Simkins 2014). Free schools were introduced in 2011 with the idea that parents could also create their own state-funded schools if they are unhappy enough with the available choices. In this development, parents as active citizens can, if they have the will and organisational capacity, potentially cross the divide from consumer to consumer-producer. Yet at the same time, it is important to remember that, despite often functioning as a lodestone for political debates on education, free schools make up a very small proportion of the overall school provision, with parentled free schools a minority of those which have had governmental support.³ In an as-yet more far-reaching policy, successive governments have increasingly incentivised schools to convert to being academies. Academies, known as ‘publicly funded independent schools’, are funded directly by central government and thus are outside the control of local authorities (Academies Commission 2013: 5). Academisation was initially developed under the Labour government in 2002 and was largely used as a way of dealing with ‘failed’ schools which were taken away from LA control. Academies were given freedoms that were not available to LA-maintained schools. These included freedoms such as establishing their own pay and conditions for staff; some flexibility in curriculum provision; flexibility in the composition of the governing bodies and freedom over the length of the school day; and number of sessions taught (Long 2015). Importantly, academies also have more control of admission procedures and exclusion which add another potential layer of selection. The failing school in a disadvantaged area continues to be a potential route to academisation. However, under the successive Coalition and Conservative governments, the possibility of conversion to an academy has now also become a choice offered to successful schools (Gunter 2012, Gunter and McGinty 2014, Courtney 2015: 802). As a result, there has been a very rapid growth in the number of academies. In May 2010, there were 203 academies in the UK and by November 2012 this had risen to 2456 and then risen again to 6087 by March 2017 (making up 22 per cent of primary schools and 62 per cent of secondary schools).⁴ By 2016 it was declared a government ambition for all schools to become academies (although as yet this policy has not been realised).⁵ The impact of the process of academisation on inequalities in education has yet to be fully studied. Certainly, the effect of free schools and academies on the quality of schools has been unimpressive (Pickett and Vanderbloemen 2015: 20). However, Stephen Gorard points out that, whilst the first type of academisation (of failing schools) tended to reduce the clustering of poorer children in specific schools, the more recent focus on successful schools becoming academies ignores any concerns for social justice and is likely to increase the incidence of local segregation by socio-economic status (Gorard 2014: 296).

Thus, through a series of structural changes over the last three and a half decades, the relations between the state (in its form of local or central government) and schools and parents have been transformed towards the construction of parents (and occasionally young people) as consumers of educational options for their children. This marks a shift in education discourses away from concerns around inequalities, exclusion or general social welfare towards the ‘parentocracy’ made up of individual consumers (Reay et al. 2011). This is significant not just for its impact on classed or ethnic inequalities, it also has significant implications in terms of disability. Stephen M. Rayner (2017) has discussed the impact of the regulated, competitive market on school leaders’ ability to respond to the needs of children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities. Ball (2003: 49) also notes how SEN programmes were dismantled or de-emphasised at the same time as able student programmes were introduced. In addition, academies tend nationally to have higher levels of permanent exclusions (Long 2015: 10). For Stambach and David, the introduction of the parentocracy also shifts parenting towards a masculine mode as education becomes about competition rather than nurturing (Stambach and David 2005, see also David 1997). As will be discussed in Chapter 3, the act of choosing itself can also be gendered within the household, although in sometimes complicated ways (David 1997). Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time as individual parental choices have been emphasised and some schools given more freedoms, what is taught in the majority of state schools has come under increasingly centralised control with the development of – and ongoing adjustments to – the national curriculum.⁶

Politicians and policy-makers tend to claim that parents have been empowered through their new role as consumers of educational options for their children. In 2005 the Labour government, which continued the promotion of market principles in education, produced the white paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All: More Choice for Parents and Pupils. Its stated aims were to ‘radically improve the system by putting parents and the needs of their children at the heart of our school system’ (quoted in Reay et al. 2011). Yet the market, as represented by parent choice, may not be a sufficient push for poorerachieving schools to improve standards (Allen et al. 2014). The operation of education as a market does not necessarily achieve a reduction in social inequalities, as Lupton argues: ‘It is reasonable to assume that the more choice, the more unequal the opportunities’ (Lupton and Thomson 2015). As we shall see in the following sections, there are concerns about the ability of parents to achieve the same educational opportunities for their children. Is the increased choice equally spread?

Having briefly considered the policy landscape of school choice, this chapter will consider the impact of this expansion of choice on questions of inequality. In particular, it will elaborate how classed and racialised inequalities are maintained through operations of choice. In order to track the classed nature of choosing, the chapter will draw on Bourdieusian theories of class which have been particularly influential in the field of education. However, the chapter will also argue that Bourdieusian understandings of class, as they are often used in the literature on school choice, risk overlooking the importance of racialised understandings of self and identity which may also play a role in shaping school choice. The chapter will track how the current literature on school choice has overlooked questions of race and frequently also ignored the experiences of working-class parents, whether white or of ethnic minorities. Finally, the chapter will explore how the spatial nature of school choice has also been frequently overlooked. It will argue that narrations of place – and spatial tactics and strategies – are key to understanding how schools’ reputations are embedded in their geographies.

Choice, class and ethnicity

The opportunity to choose their children’s schools and have more say in their schooling may be welcomed by some. Yet it can also be perceived as a burden for parents as they negotiate a complex educational system governed by a proliferation of different types of schools with different rules of access. Choosing schools is made more complex through this variation. Courtney has attempted to map the variation in school types in England and has concluded that:

if one includes variations according to pupil sex and age which have largely been omitted from these typologies for simplicity, there are presently between 70 and 90 different types of school in England. This is not to say that parents may choose from this number: a significant proportion selects the pupil, albeit covertly and/or through branding. (Courtney 2015: 814)

Despite this variation, and although there is no simple or uniform schema for admission to schools, distance from residence to school remains an important factor in admissions. This has particular implications for the relationship between schools, inequalities and place, as will be discussed below. LAs, academies and free schools have relative freedom to formulate their own mechanisms of prioritising pupils (within certain bounds established by the 2003 Code of Practice on School Admissions (Croft 2004: 930)). Possibilities of choice are also shaped by the various types of (wholly or partially) selective schools – including grammar schools; religious schools and other voluntary aided schools; academies; technical colleges; and specialist schools. In addition, there is a complicated system of appeals which parents may have to negotiate if they are unhappy with the school their child has been allocated to (Croft 2004). Thus, skills and knowledge are required to navigate the complex terrain of different schools and admissions procedures. As much of this knowledge is acquired through ‘hot’ sources of personal networks (which will be discussed further below), this can lead to disadvantage for those who, for a range of different reasons, have less extensive or effective local networks.

As suggested above, the dominance of models which have at least some element of proximity of residence to school as a criterion means that parents and children have limits on choice set by their geographical locations. Although those with the economic power to move may be able to move into the catchment areas of particular schools, even for those with the financial resources this is limited by the uneven distribution of different types of schools. Realistically, many families cannot afford to move and those who can are still likely to be tied to particular broad areas and regions by employment and other attachments. Importantly, in discussions of school choice, it is often forgotten that exercising choice tends to be most possible in urban, city areas. In rural areas or small towns, particularly at secondary school level, there may be almost no choice (Reay et al. 2011). The ‘market’ of schooling therefore has profound geographical rigidities and significant barriers to full engagement. The difficulty of navigating the process of choosing schools was recognised with the introduction of Choice Advisor Services based in Local Authorities in the 2006 Education Act (Exley 2012). Choice advisers were established to provide a service for the ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘vulnerable’. The establishment of these services risks implying that it is the parents’ choosing which may be at fault, rather than any inadequacy in the choices available to them. In her study of LA advisers, Exley (2012: 81) found that many saw themselves as ‘helping working class and disadvantaged parents “make the best of a bad situation”’ rather than actually facilitating positive choices.

Whilst choices may be extremely limited in rural areas, even within urban areas, as we shall see in Chapter 3, parents often feel a lack of choice. The education market is affected by limits of supply (schools cannot easily ‘spring up’ to meet a demand) which means that schools do not operate in a pure market. The cost of some schools being winners in the market for students and funding is that others will be losers. Yet many children still have to attend those ‘losing’ schools. There are only so many places which popular schools can offer for students and, for many parents and children, the notion of choice becomes a fiction, particularly in those areas where all the possible choices are considered unpopular or undesirable. Thus, as the discourse around schooling has shifted to one of individual parents’ choices, the question is raised as to whose choices are increased, and what impact does the notion of choice have on well-established inequalities in education provision and outcomes. For Reay et al (Reay et al. 2011: 68), ‘the powerful idea that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Unequal choosing
• 2 Imagining places
• 3 Choice, what choice?
• 4 Schooling fears
• 5 Evaluating the mix: negotiating with multiculture
• 6 Conclusions
• Appendix: Participants
• References
• Index