Michael Gove says new admissions code will aid popular schools

Education secretary argues in a Guardian interview that the changes will enable good schools to expand Ministers want to scrap restrictions on the expansion of the most popular state schools, allowing them to take on more pupils in a move that will increase the financial pressures on struggling schools. More parents will get their first choice of school under government plans to “remove bureaucracy” around the expansion of good schools, the education secretary, Michael Gove, revealed in an interview with the Guardian. Weaker schools will feel the squeeze because the level of school funding is determined by the number of pupils. The changes, which will apply to all state schools, will be outlined when ministers publish a revised school admissions code this summer. Ministers believe local authorities are in some cases deliberately preventing good schools from raising their “planned admissions numbers” because it becomes harder to sustain a weaker school if pupils defect. Some popular schools, including a Muslim girls’ school in Blackburn and a Catholic secondary school in Hull, are proposing to set up “overflow” free schools to absorb demand for places, but the government also wants to make it easier for successful schools to take on more children without creating an offshoot. Gove said: “We hope the new admissions code allows the possibility of increasing planned admissions numbers so good schools can expand, and there will be underperforming schools that have fewer and fewer numbers. That will compel their leadership and the local authority to ask: what’s wrong? “I think it’s wrong to have a situation where the local authority says: ‘This is a good school, it’s full up, parents have to go to the less good school down the road’.Because as a result of the local authority’s failure to deal with educational underperformance, children continue to go to a poor school.” Gove also compared the extension of the academies programme – schools that are independent of local authorities and get their funding directly from government – to council house sales in the 1980s. The government plans to lobby university vice-chancellors, businesses and private schools to become involved in sponsoring academies in an attempt to reach areas of the country where few have converted. A total of 658 schools are now academies. A further 686 are in the pipeline. But there are 18 local authorities where no academies have been established, including Blackpool, Leicestershire, Warrington and Wigan. Gove said: “There’s an analogy which, as a Conservative politician, I reach for … which is with council house sales … initially the people who bought council houses, people who were perhaps seen by their neighbours as a bit pushy and assertive – ‘Why do they think they’re so special?’. And then, after in a community a few people had done it, and the neighbours noticed they had a greater degree of freedom and flexibility, other people thought, that makes sense, I’ll take advantage of it too. So the position moved from being a few pioneers, to being a minority but respectable position to becoming mainstream, to becoming the majority position.” He said the plan was to identify areas “which stick out like sore thumbs” before picking sponsors to help establish academies. Gove also said he wanted to strengthen the role of the schools adjudicator, the government watchdog that rules in disputes over admissions. The current chief adjudicator, Ian Craig, announced in March he was stepping down early. Last year he warned that government plans to simplify the admissions code could weaken it. When Craig announced his decision to quit, the department said it would allow his successor time to “get up to speed” ahead of the new admissions process. Gove said: “One of the things we hope to do in the admissions code – still Is are being dotted and Ts crossed — one of the other things we want to do is ensure that in the system there will be more fairness, the schools adjudicator will have more teeth, so that anyone concerned about admissions arrangements can report them to the schools adjudicator. “Before it had to be a relevant individual, a parent at the school or connected [in some way], now if you are a parent anywhere and you see admissions arrangements which you think are unfair you can refer it to the schools adjudicator. Our aim is to allow good schools to expand, but also to have a strong adjudicator who is in a position to investigate and clamp down.” School admissions Schools Education policy Michael Gove Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.