A new study shows that many parents don’t consider the
value-added score when applying to secondary schools for their
child. This means that often they don’t select their most
effective local school.
In England, children (or, most commonly, their parents) are given
freedom of choice over which secondary schools they want to apply
to, alongside various indicators of school quality.
The indicators exist to help parents make informed choices, and
the intention is that parents prioritising the most effective
secondary schools in their area will serve to generate
competition between schools, and ultimately drive-up standards.
One such indicator is a school’s ‘value-added’ score. This tries
to measure the progress that pupils make since obtaining their
Key Stage 2 results at the end of primary school. The value-added
score is aimed at giving parents information on the quality of
the school over and above GCSE results alone, which may simply
reflect the academic ability of individual pupils within a given
cohort.
In a new study funded by the Nuffield Foundation, researchers
from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the University of
California and the University of York considered whether parents
prioritise high value-added (or ‘more effective’) schools. Using
data from secondary school applications from everyone who applied
to start secondary school in 2014, they found that:
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Parents do not consistently apply to their most
effective local school. There are large gaps in the
value-added of parents’ first-choice schools and the school
with the highest value-added score in the local area. This
suggests that factors such as distance or peer composition are
also important and influence their choices of where to
apply.
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This is especially true for parents from poorer
backgrounds. On a value-added basis, the best school
within relatively easy reach of poorer pupils performed
similarly to the best school within relatively easy reach of
richer pupils. But better-off pupils are much more likely to
put a high value-added school as their first choice. The
best-off pupils (in the top fifth by socio-economic status) on
average stated a preference for a school two-thirds of the way
up the value-added distribution. The least affluent (those in
the bottom fifth by socio-economic status) tend to put schools
that perform below the average on this measure as their first
choice.
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This suggests scope for supporting less well-off
parents to identify and express a preference for more effective
schools. This could result in a reduction in
the gap in access to effective schools and might help
to narrow gaps in GCSE attainment.
If parents simply lack awareness of school value-added scores,
then targeted information campaigns could be used to narrow
application gaps.
If parents know about value-added scores but believe their
children are unlikely to be admitted to a high value-added
school, then reforms to the application system to encourage more
ambitious application behaviour, or changes to school admission
rules to increase the chances of entry for certain types of
students, might be called for.
On the other hand, if parents are aware of effectiveness but
prioritise, for example, close proximity, then changing
information or application procedures is unlikely to be
effective. Only policies focused on improving less
well-performing schools are likely to work.
Dr Jack Britton, Associate Director at the
Institute for Fiscal Studies, Reader in Economics at the
University of York and an author of the study, said: ‘Our study
reveals that parents commonly do not apply to the most effective
secondary school in their local area for their children, and that
this is especially true for parents living in poorer areas. This
result suggests that students from poorer backgrounds could
potentially access more effective schools if parental application
patterns were to change, suggesting it is an area that is ripe
for policy attention.’
Josh Hillman, Nuffield Foundation Director of
Education, said: ‘Parents and pupils face a number of
considerations in selecting a secondary school, but this
important research shows that current parental choice
arrangements could be exacerbating the gap in educational
opportunity and achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged
young people.’
