Area (2001) 33.4, 368–381
The geography of choice and diversity in the
‘new’ secondary education market of England
Chris Taylor
Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT
Email: [email protected]
Revised manuscript received 10 May 2001
The geography of education remains an under-researched area, particularly in light of major
transformations in education provision over the last two decades. This paper reaffirms the
position of a geographical approach to studying the education system by focussing upon
the differential impact of two major features of national policy reforms on secondary school
admissions in England: the desire to enhance choice and diversity in the provision of
schooling.
Key words: education markets, school choice, school diversity, private–state divide,
admission appeals
Introduction
Since 1979 there has been a marked shift in the
education system of England and Wales and, in
particular, in the provision and organization of compulsory schooling. New legislation, such as the 1980
Education Act and the 1988 Education Reform Act,
introduced a number of measures based on market
principles aimed at improving standards and increasing efficiency in the education system. Towards
the end of the 1980s, a number of geographers
reviewed these reforms and proposed how they
would impact upon the geography of education
(Burdett 1988; Bradford 1990). Considering that the
resulting education legislation has probably been the
most significant since the introduction of free education in 1944, it is perhaps surprising that the
geography of education has remained a relatively
underdeveloped area of research throughout the
1990s.
This paper attempts to begin filling this void by
discussing the geography of the new education
market. Based on analysis of changes to the school
admissions process and change in provision, it
has a dual role. First, these discussions will draw
geographers’ attention to the changing geography of
compulsory schooling and, therefore, proposes how
these changes impact differentially across England
and Wales. Second, a geographical examination of
the education market will inform educational studies
of the importance of space and context upon the
reforms. This paper argues that, even though there
has been a strong process of centralization in the last
20 years, there has actually been a differential impact
of the reforms across England and Wales. Consequently, there now exists a mosaic of different
education markets, where the two key components
of the reforms, choice and diversity, are unevenly
distributed.
Background to legislative change in
education, England and Wales
The introduction of educational legislation and the
subsequent changes over time can be seen in three
waves. Brown (1990) suggested that the first wave
was the development of mass schooling during the
nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth
century, culminating in the 1944 Education Act. This
was followed by the second wave of legislation that
involved an ideological shift in the organizing principle of schools towards a meritocratic society. This
ISSN 0004-0894 Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2001
Choice and diversity in secondary education
required that all children were given equal opportunities in obtaining an education and, consequently,
employment. The legislation that really drove this
belief came during the 1960s and 1970s with the
growth of Comprehensive Schools. As Brown (1990)
has argued, this did produce a general increase in
standards and was very influential in equalizing
gender inequalities. However, it still maintained
other, relative, differentials in education performance. For example, the performance of schools in the
poorest neighbourhoods continued to remain significantly low (Benn and Simon 1970). Also, the
ideology of meritocracy was soon criticized for being
simply ‘symbolic’, and did not prevent high levels
of youth unemployment that came with negative
economic growth during the early 1980s.
Many advocates of change criticized the ineffectiveness of institutional powers to reconcile these
problems. For example, Chubb and Moe (1988)
discussed the effectiveness of the private sector in
providing the desired quality education because it is
controlled by society rather than by bureaucracy.
Using Hirschman’s (1970) ideas of ‘exit’ and ‘voice’,
they also stressed the greater social inequality that
arises in a public system, because the only way to
change the education a child is receiving in the state
sector is to use your ‘voice’ to bring about change
within the school. Consequently, this requires a
particular level of cultural capital to be successful,
and since cultural capital is unevenly distributed,
inequalities in bringing about change will occur.
Within a private education system, parents can also
use ‘exit’ by changing school in order to get the
education they want for their children. This, Chubb
and Moe (1988) stressed, gives parents greater
opportunities to change the education of their child,
and possibly requires less cultural capital to bring
about. Having the ‘exit’ option is also seen as
promoting greater responsiveness in schools in the
first place, so that parents are regularly considered
when deciding what education to provide and
how it is delivered. Advocates of change argued that
state schools were in a monopolistic situation
because, as Lauder (1991) suggested, the zoning
system used to allocate pupils to schools and, as
Tooley (1997) explained, the absence of any element of choice in the system tended to promote
monopolistic behaviour by schools and the system
generally.
These critiques of the second wave, and changes
to the political economy of the UK, led to the
current, third wave, in legislation, initiated under the
369
Conservative Government, 1979–97. This recent
wave in education legislation was organized around
what Brown (1990) called an ‘ideology of parentocracy’. In other words, the system is structured around
the wealth and wishes of the parents rather than the
ability and effort of pupils, using the rhetoric of
‘parental choice’, ‘educational standards’ and the
‘free market’.
The failure of the Conservative Government to
introduce a decisive set of reforms in its first two
terms of office was eventually ended with the Education Reform Act (ERA) in 1988. This Act signalled
the beginning of the major part of contemporary
education reform and heralded a significant shift in
policy towards choice and diversity. The Department
for Education outlined the objectives of the Act as:
The Government’s principal aims for schools are to
improve standards of achievement for all pupils across
the curriculum, to widen the choice available for parents for the education of their children and to enable
schools to respond effectively to what parents and the
community require of them, thus securing the best
possible return from the substantial investment of
resources. (Department for Education 1988)
In other words, the general aim of the Act was
‘to introduce a more competitive, quasi-market
approach to the allocation of resources in the
education system, and to increase the range of
parental choice over children’s schooling’ (Bartlett
1993, 125).
There were four key areas of reform that the
Conservatives introduced in order to develop choice
and diversity. First was the introduction of formula
funding. Prior to this reform, administrators in
respective Local Education Authorities allocated
budgets to schools, but under this new legislation a
significant proportion of schools’ budgets were allocated according to the age and number of students
that they could attract. The second key area of
reforms was the introduction of delegated budgets
and delegated management under the legislation on
Local Management of Schools (LMS). This allowed
schools to decide for themselves how their budgets
would be spent. Consequently, this gave greater
powers to headteachers and elected school governors in deciding the shape and structure of education within their school, albeit within a prescriptive
National Curriculum.
These two areas of reform, formula funding and
LMS, have significantly altered the relationship
between the Local Education Authority and the
370 Taylor
school. The powers and influence of the LEA have
been diminished dramatically as a result of these
reforms and in turn this has given schools a great
deal more individual freedom in providing education.
The third key area for the reforms gave schools
the opportunity to completely ‘opt out’ of Local
Authority control. If a school decided to ‘opt out’
then they gained Grant Maintained (GM) status,
which meant that their budgets would come directly
from Central Government. Such schools could then
operate entirely independently of LEA control —
from their admission policies to the drawing up of
contracts for their teachers. These ‘new’ schools
should also be seen in relation to the establishment
of City Technology Colleges, which were introduced
to provide a different ‘type’ of education. Similar to
GM Schools, these Colleges were independent of
LEA control, but they differed in that they were
funded from both the public and the private sector,
hence the closer link to employment, industry and
technology.
The final area of reforms enabled parents to make
a preference for a school of their choice instead of
being allocated a school by the Local Authority.
Parents now have the right for their children to
attend their choice of school as long as the size of a
school’s intake does not exceed some predefined
admission level, the published admission number
(PAN). The establishment of an appeals procedure to
give parents the opportunity to have a hearing in
front of an admissions panel if they are dissatisfied
with their final school allocation supports this policy
of open enrolment. Another feature of the reforms
that also supplemented the opportunity for parents
to choose schools, and that has received widespread
publicity, particularly in the media, has been the
publication of examination performance league
tables. These were intended to provide useful information to parents to assist them when choosing a
school for their children.
Together, these four key areas of reform have
created a system in which parents are encouraged to
behave as ‘consumers’ of education and where
schools are given the opportunity to respond to the
demands of these ‘consumers’ in order to maximize
the number of pupils attending their school and,
therefore, maximize the level of resources they
receive. This amounts to the two key concepts of the
market, that of choice and competition, but where
the Government remains the purchaser.
Similar education reforms have been introduced in
other countries, typically because of the same under-
lying pressures in the political economy (see, for
example, Ball 1998) and because of policy networks
(Whitty and Edwards 1998). Examples can be found
in The Netherlands (Dronkers 1995), New Zealand
(Waslander and Thrupp 1995), the USA (Chubb and
Moe 1990), Scotland (Adler et al. 1989), France
(Ambler 1994) and Israel (Menahem et al. 1993).
However, reforms to the English and Welsh education system stand out as being more advanced
towards the New Right’s ‘ideal’ scenario for
educational provision (Chubb and Moe 1992).
Subsequent education legislation, first by the
Conservatives under the leadership of John Major,
and then followed under Tony Blair’s Labour
Government, have, to some extent, continued to
enhance choice and diversity in the UK education
system. Indeed, in 1992 the Conservatives produced
a White Paper entitled ‘Choice and Diversity: a New
Framework for Schools’. This established mechanisms for the creation of new types of schools at the
secondary level in order to provide even greater
diversity in the school system. The 1993 Education
Act provided the legislation for the establishment
of Specialist Schools, which allowed maintained
schools to establish themselves as ‘specialists’ in
teaching particular subjects, such as technology and
languages.
The current Labour Government has also
embraced ‘public sector managerialism’ (Cutler and
Waine 1997) by using a similar language to the
Conservatives of ‘targets’, ‘monitoring’ and ‘performance’. The ‘Excellence in Schools’ White Paper (July
1997), and the subsequent School Standards &
Framework (SSF) Act (1998), included the setting of
further standards and performance targets for
schools, Local Authorities and Central Government.
Choice and diversity have continued to play a
prominent role in the reforms. For example, the
Labour Government has proposed to modernize
the comprehensive principle by continuing to offer
school diversity but without returning to the 11+.
GM schools were also allowed to retain some of
their unique autonomy under Foundation School
status. The SSF Act also introduced Fair Funding,
which, again, attempted to improve the allocation of
resources to schools based on their success in the
education market place. Most significantly of all,
however, was the introduction of a Code of Practice
for admissions, ensuring every parent was aware of
their right to express a preference for a school and
to make the allocation process as transparent to
parents as possible.
Choice and diversity in secondary education
Educational research
Within educational research the central focus has
been on Open Enrolment and both the process of
school choice and the outcome of such decisions
(see, for example, Ball et al. 1995; Glatter et al. 1997;
Gorard and Fitz 1998). The key issues have been
whether parents have real choice in the ‘new’ education market and, if so, whether all parents have this
choice, how the decision-making process for school
choice operates and how it varies between parents,
and what the consequences are for schools and their
intakes. The greatest debate has been as to whether
the education market is equitable or, specifically, if
‘cream-skimming’ (Le Grand and Bartlett 1993)
within the market has arisen. In Whitty’s (1997, 14)
review of research on school choice in England,
the USA and New Zealand, ‘the academically
able are the ’’cream’’ that most schools do seek to
attract. Such students stay in the system longer and
thus bring in more money, as well as making the
school appear successful in terms of its test scores
and hence attractive to other desirable clients’.
Detailed research by Ball (1993) and Gewirtz et al.
(1994) has shown how different parents perceive
and engage with the market in a variety of
ways, which in turn produces different outcomes
reflecting social class divisions. However, more
recent research examining the new education market in England and Wales has suggested that over the
last 11 years school intakes have become more
homogenous, i.e. greater integration of pupils from
different socio-economic backgrounds (Gorard and
Fitz 2000).
Considering the attention given to these reforms
in educational research, it was geographers, how-
371
ever, who were the first to suggest that there would
be a differential impact of the reforms across England
and Wales. For example, Burdett suggested that a
four-tier education system, based on school diversity,
would emerge that was ‘likely to be socially and
spatially divisive’ (1988, 214). Initial analysis of the
impact of the reforms by Bradford (1990) supported
these claims. Bradford (1995) has also proposed that
school diversification has led to a blurring of the
private–state divide in the education system. Such
research has helped build a picture of what the
geography of education may look like as a result of
these educational reforms. The findings presented
here continue to do this by focussing on two of the
key elements of the new education market, choice
and diversity.
The geography of school diversity
One of the underlying elements in the development
of market processes in education has been the
need for diversity within the choice of schools.
Legislation throughout the 1980s and early 1990s
has frequently been introduced to provide and
encourage different types of schooling available to
parents. Consequently, there now exists a new diversity of school types. Bradford (1993) suggested
that at the national level this diversity could be
considered as a private–state continuum of school
provision.
‘The changed state of the education system in
England can be summed up at the national level as a
blurring of the private/state divide’ (Bradford 1993,
79). As Figure 1 illustrates, Bradford distinguished
between a number of different types of school,
Figure 1 The ‘private–state’ continuum in educational provision (from Bradford 1993, 80)
372 Taylor
Figure 2 Proportion of schools by LEA that were
fee-paying, England 1998
west of England generally have the greatest presence
of Independent schools. This spatial imbalance in
fee-paying education, it could be argued, is closely
related to the distribution of wealth across England.
However, Bradford and Burdett (1989) observed
that even allowing for social-class differences, there
was still a greater propensity for private education to
be in particular regions, such as in the South East.
The strength of the fee-paying education sector was
given a boost during the Conservative Government
of the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of the
Assisted Places Scheme. This was the first piece of
legislation that turned away from the Comprehensive
approach of the 1960s and 1970s, and made grants
available to bright pupils who could not afford
otherwise to attend a fee-paying school. This represented a major blurring of the private–state divide as
the state was, in effect, subsidizing the fee-paying
education sector. The Labour Government incrementally abolished the Assisted Places Scheme upon
election in 1997. However, several years later there
were still children in fee-paying schools benefiting
from this scheme, maintaining the increased presence of the Independent school sector since 1979
(Figure 3).
City Technology Colleges
based on their degree of private and state involvement. The content may have slightly changed since
the arrival of the Labour Government in 1997,
but the form of this private–state continuum has
remained intact.
It could be argued that there are currently five key
types of school in the market place, each with their
own geography, and located along the private–state
continuum:
1
2
3
4
Independent schools;
City Technology Colleges;
Foundation schools;
Voluntary Aided and Voluntary
schools; and
5 Community schools.
Controlled
The discussion will now, in turn, examine the
geography of each of these school types.
Independent schools
There has been a strong North–South divide in the
provision of Independent schools since the 1960s
(Coates and Rawstron 1971). This North–South
divide persists today (Figure 2), but LEAs in the south
The City Technology Colleges (CTCs) were designed
to foster closer links between employment, industry
and technology, and were financed jointly by the
private and state sector. However, they have been
slow to grow in number, and hence do not feature
significantly on the education landscape (Figure 4).
The introduction of CTCs further developed the
private–state continuum in these areas of England.
Indeed, since the arrival of the Labour Government
in 1997, the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) has categorized such educational institutions within the Independent sector.
Foundation schools (previously Grant Maintained schools)
The 1988 Education Reform Act allowed schools to
opt out of Local Authority control. If a school
decided to ‘opt out’ then they gained Grant Maintained (GM) status, which meant that their budgets
would come directly from Central Government.
Such schools could then operate entirely independently of LEA control, particularly in formulating their
own admission policies. The first GM school was
established in September 1989, and by 1994 there
were 814 secondary GM schools and 260 primary
Choice and diversity in secondary education
Percentage of all schools and al
all
pupils,
England
pupils, England
schools
373
pupils
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
1979
0
Year
Figure 3 Proportion of all full-time pupils attending fee-paying schools and fee-paying schools as a proportion of all
schools, England 1979–99
GM schools. The uptake of GM schools was spatially
marked because most of the early conversions to
GM status were in Conservative-controlled LEAs
and were schools that were already selective (i.e.
ex-grammar schools), single-sex or threatened with
closure (Fitz et al. 1993). Many religious schools also
opted for GM status at the time, again in the desire
to gain some autonomy from the LEA. Consequently,
by 1998, just before GM status was removed, the
presence of GM schools across England was
unevenly distributed (Figure 5). LEAs with a relatively
high incidence of GM schools were found in all
regions of England, possibly with the exception of
the North East, and in county shire and metropolitan
areas.
The incoming Labour Government removed GM
status and instead allowed schools to become Foundation schools. The majority of GM schools became
Foundation schools, but denominational GM schools
returned to Voluntary Aided or Voluntary Controlled
status. Therefore, with the exception of the denominational schools, the spatial pattern of Foundation
schools remains similar to that of GM schools prior
to 1998.
Voluntary Aided and Voluntary Controlled
schools
The geography of Voluntary Aided (VA) and
Voluntary Controlled (VC) schools is historically
embedded. The location of such schools often goes
back before the state was involved in education
provision, and was highly dependent upon local
decision-making by the respective Church authorities (Taylor and Gorard 2001). There are currently
two geographies of religious schools: those in rural
areas, which are usually well integrated in the LEA
school provision, often serving local communities in
much the same way as Community schools, and
those in urban areas, where their popularity ensures
that they generally only serve their respective religious communities. As a result, VA and VC schools
are relatively evenly distributed across England
(Figure 6), even though there does appear to be an
East–West divide.
As discussed above, some religious schools opted
out of LEA control during the 1990s. Even though
they were not allowed to become Foundation
schools, VA and VC schools are still allowed to
control their own admissions. The degree to which
374 Taylor
% of schools Grant Maintained
0
0–1.22
1.22–2.92
2.92–8.491
8.491–24.176
70
Figure 4 Location of City Technology Colleges, England
1995
their admission arrangements are compatible with
Community schools is often dependent upon which
of the two geographies, outlined above, they belong
to. The majority of VA and VC schools are either
Church of England or Roman Catholic. However,
there are a small number of religious schools that
serve other religious communities, such as Jewish,
Muslim or Hindu families. Recent proposals by the
Labour Government have opened the door to
further diversity of Church schools.
Community schools
The majority of schools in England are Community
schools, most often what were secondary modern or
comprehensive schools. The distribution of such
schools across LEAs in England is obviously inversely
related to the geographies of schools of other types.
Consequently, the presence of Community schools
varies quite dramatically, from LEAs with more than
three-quarters of their total number of schools as
Community schools, to areas of England where they
account for less than one-quarter of the schools
within the LEA (Figure 7).
0
70
140 Kilometres
Figure 5 Proportion of schools by LEA that were Grant
Maintained, England 1998
Even within the Community school sector, there is
great variation in their characteristics. The most
obvious example of such variation is in the incidence
of single-sex Community schools. It should be noted
that such schools, by definition, are exclusionary in
the education market place. Similarly, Bradford
(1993) has suggested that a form of private–state
diversity within Community schools was their level of
popularity, as determined by the market. This is
significant, since popular schools tend to be oversubscribed, and hence have to apply oversubscription criteria that exclude some pupils from admission
to them.
More formal diversification within the Community
school sector has come in the form of the Specialist
School programme, first introduced in the 1993
Education Act, but further developed by the Labour
Government towards the end of the 1990s. The
impact of Specialist Schools has yet to be examined,
but initial observations suggest that their success
tends to depend upon where they are located.
The private–state continuum at the local level
Clearly the geography of school diversity is very
complex, even when simplified to five different types
Choice and diversity in secondary education
375
% of schools Community status
16.667–40.909
40.909–52.575
52.575–62.774
62.774–70.952
70.952–86.441
70
Figure 6 Proportion of schools by LEA that were
Voluntary Aided or Voluntary Controlled,
England 1998
of school. As Bradford suggests, ‘while this continuum is characteristic of the national situation,
however, there is much variation at the local
level’ (Bradford 1993, 80). The development of the
private–state continuum has, itself, developed
unevenly across the country. Bradford (1995) considered the local development of the private–state
continuum in education to examine the incidence of
Grant Maintained schools. This highlighted areas of
England where schools were opting out of LEA
control to GM status that deviated from the degree
of privatization in the education system already in
their respective locales.
Bradford’s analysis of the incidence of GM schools
highlighted how the school system was developing
differently at the local level. Indeed, based on
Bradford’s concept of the private–state continuum,
and using the actual composition of the education market by LEA, six different local forms of
private–state continuum can be identified. Table 1
summarizes the resulting continua based on the
approximate proportion of schools in each LEA as
Community, Grant Maintained, Voluntary Aided and
Voluntary Controlled or Independent. Using these
Figure 7
0
70
140 Kilometres
Proportion of schools by LEA that were
Community Schools, England 1998
findings, an overall geography of school diversity in
England can be produced, illustrating the different
levels of private–state development in each LEA
(Figure 8).
The first observation of this analysis of LEA school
composition is the relatively insignificant presence
of Grant Maintained schools on the development
of the local private–state continua. For example, in
the LEAs that could be classed as exhibiting a
well-developed private–state continuum, there was
almost no incidence of Grant Maintained schools.
Indeed, there was no particular local private–state
continuum identified here that was more likely to
have GM schools present. This would suggest that
the propensity of schools to become GM in England
had little or no relationship with the degree of
privatization, within the respective LEAs, already in
place.
The most ‘private’ and well-developed private–
state continua occur in Inner London extending to
the west of Outer London and into parts of the
adjoining counties of the South. The significance of
more religious but still relatively well-developed
private–state continua can also be seen, typically in
county LEAs of the West and metropolitan boroughs
Description
The most complete private–state
continuum, with all types of schooling
represented fairly equally.
Fairly well-developed, private–state
continuum, but lacking a significant
presence of religious schools.
Fairly well-developed, private–state
continuum, but, unlike Cluster 2, has a
greater presence of religious schools at
expense of Independent sector.
No real private development of schooling,
but a very significant presence of religious
schools.
Even development of Independent and
religious schools, but with relatively large
Community school presence.
Mainly state schools, but some private
presence, usually either religious or
Independent schools.
Source: Department for Education and Skills
P-S 6 State continuum
P-S 5 State–private continuum
P-S 4 Religious & undeveloped
continuum
P-S 3 Religious & well-developed
continuum
P-S 2 Semi-private &
well-developed continuum
P-S 1 Private & well-developed
continuum
Local private–state continua
Table 1 Six local private–state continua, based on school composition of LEAs
62–87
47–63
16–37
38–60
38–55
22–32
0–10
0–24
0
0–16
0–12
0–3
0–19
5–20
0–17
0–16
14–33
33–37
9–32
12–31
63–67
33–52
19–30
30–44
Approximate proportion of schools by LEA, 1998
Comprehensive
Grant Maintained
Independent
Voluntary Aided or
(%)
(%)
(%)
Controlled (%)
376 Taylor
Choice and diversity in secondary education
Figure 8 Distribution of local private–state continua in
England, as at 1998
of the North West. If the presence of religious
schools is ignored for the moment, then there is a
distinct North–South divide emerging, with the South
East generally having the greater levels of ‘private’
development in their education systems. The most
‘state’ and un-developed ‘private’ systems are found
in the West Midlands and the North East of England.
The geography of school choice
The second key component of the recent education
reforms has been the introduction of ‘parental
choice’ or, more accurately, the right of a parent to
express a preference of school for their child. Such
a policy has actually been around since the 1944
Education Act, such that even in the 1970s it was
estimated that 27 per cent of LEAs operated a system
of parental choice (Dore and Flowerdew 1981).
Consequently, it could be argued that schools in
these Authorities were exposed to competition
much earlier than in other LEAs, and that parents
were also introduced to consumer empowerment at
an early stage. However, open enrolment was given
greater prominence in the 1980 Education Act,
although it was still possible for LEAs to ignore
377
parents’ preferences if it prevented them from
‘making efficient use of resources’. Allowing LEAs to
continue to set admissions levels for each school
based on their forecasting of future pupil numbers
inevitably constrained ‘parental choice’. The 1988
Education Reform Act loosened these constraints by
imposing admission levels for schools called the
Standard Number, which were determined by the
size of each school’s intake in either September
1979 or September 1988, whichever was highest.
Coincidentally, the 1979 intake year was a peak year
for secondary school admissions nationally. Subsequently, there were much greater opportunities for
parents to actually get a place for their children in a
school of their choice. The establishment of an
appeals procedure gave parents even greater
opportunity to practise school choice.
Two further factors have now ensured that parental choice dominates the admissions process of
both the primary and secondary education sectors.
The first was the Greenwich Judgement (1989),
which prevented LEAs from giving priority in allocating school places to parents from their own
Authority. In effect this opened up cross-border
movement. The second factor was the Rotherham
Judgement (1997), which gave priority in the allocation of school places to parents who had made an
application for a school over parents who had not
made any kind of application for a school place. The
consequence of this was that LEAs had to make sure
that every parent made an application for a school
place rather than allocating places by default. In
some respects this has forced Authorities to inform
every parent of their right in making a school preference, and to make their admissions procedure
clearer to parents.
Few studies have been able to quantify the degree
to which parents are ‘active’ in the market place. In
particular, since the Rotherham Judgement every
parent theoretically makes an application for a
school. However, using the home postcodes of
pupils for one year’s intake and a Geographical
Information System (GIS), it is possible to measure
the distances parents lived from the school of their
choice. The proportion of pupils who did not attend
their nearest school gives some indication of the
extent to which parents were participating in the
market place (for a greater discussion of this technique see Taylor (forthcoming)). Table 2 shows the
varying levels of market activity, as calculated by this
method, for six LEAs across England. Clearly there
was a relationship between the urban–rural nature of
378 Taylor
Table 2 ‘Active’ choice, by LEA
LEA
Total intake (1995/6)
London Borough
Large Metropolitan Borough (West Midlands)
Small Metropolitan Borough (West Midlands)
Metropolitan Borough (Greater Manchester)
County (Eastern)
County (West Midlands)
Number of schools in study
% Not ‘local’†
15
61
20
21
38
29
72.66
68.28
47.73
60.52
28.69
41.68
2202
11 612
3386
3665
6988
4458
Market activity (% of pupils not attending
their nearest school)
† Calculated by taking the proportion of pupils in a school’s intake that lived nearer to an alternative secondary school.
Source: Data provided by the Local Education Authority
80
Large Metropolitan
London Borough 1 Borough (WM)
London Borough 2
Metropolitan Borough
(Grtr. Manc.)
70
60
Small Metropolitan
Borough (WM)
50
County (WM)
40
30
County (Eastern)
20
10
0
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
_
Appeals lodged (% of
1996 97)
of all
all secondary
secondary school
school age
age pupils,
pupils,1996–97)
Figure 9 Relationship between market activity and appeals lodged
the LEA and the overall level of parental activity in
the market place. Similarly, the number of appeals
lodged by LEA was related to these varying levels of
parental choice (Figure 9). As more parents participate in the market place, it is inevitable that more
parents will not get a school place of their choice.
This in turn will be closely, although not directly,
related to the number of parents who appeal against
their allocated school place. As a result, it is possible
to use the number of appeals lodged as a proportion
of all admissions as a crude proxy measure of choice.
The number of appeals lodged by parents has
increased dramatically during the 1990s (Table 3).
The total number of appeals lodged in 1997–8
represented a 22 per cent increase over the previous
two years and was also four times more than it was
in 1988–9. However, these appeals are not distributed equally across England. As illustrated in Figure
10, this could represent varying levels of choice
occurring across England.
The LEAs with a high occurrence of appeals were
typically urban/metropolitan Authorities. However,
this was not the case for all urban Authorities.
Similarly, there were a number of county LEAs with a
high proportion of appeals being lodged, such as
Lancashire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
The greater propensity of appeals, and hence
parental choice, in urban areas is largely a result of
Choice and diversity in secondary education
Table 3 Total number of appeals lodged for maintained
primary and secondary schools, 1988–9 to 1997–8,
England
Year
1997–8
1996–7
1995–6
1993–4
1988–9
Number of appeals
76
72
62
54
18
971
664
856
319
040
Source: Department for Eucation and Skills
Figure 10 Appeals lodged as a percentage of LEA
admissions, England 1997–8
greater accessibility between schools. However, as
suggested above, the correlation between the density of schools and the number of appeals lodged is
not that significant (R = 0.55). There are clearly a
number of other factors that determine the overall
levels of choice occurring in the education market.
One such key factor is the variation in the admissions procedures. LEAs and schools employ a
number of ways in which they allocate school places,
in terms of both the procedure through which
parents apply for a place and the criteria used to
379
allocate places when a school is oversubscribed
(White et al. 2001). Forrest (1996) has suggested that
LEAs who operate preference systems of admissions,
where parents apply for a number of different
schools, were more likely to have appeals lodged
against the final allocation of places. LEAs who have
attempted to retain a catchment area or primary
feeder school system to allocate school places
tended to have fewer appeals lodged. This could
suggest that a preference system for admissions
generates greater parental activity in the market
place. Similarly, Fitz et al. (2001) compared the
admissions arrangements of four LEAs in detail,
thereby identifying potential obstacles and methods
that enhance or constrain market activity by parents.
Another factor could be the number of surplus
places in each market place. If the underlying
population demographics of an area are such that all
schools in the market place are likely to be filled,
then there is little opportunity for parents to acquire
a place for their child in a school of their choice. As
a result, there are perhaps likely to be more appeals
lodged in such areas. Similarly, some schools could
operate admissions policies that have a propensity to
exclude pupils, such as places allocated on an admissions exam. Since the Labour Government has been
in power, there has been relatively little success in
removing such Grammar school places from the
system. Consequently, areas with these types of
school could produce greater market frustration for
parents, and encourage them to appeal.
It could be true that there is a greater propensity
for parents to be active in the market place in areas
where there may be a greater desire to avoid particular schools. Parents may be more inclined to
send their children greater distances to an alternative
school or lodge an appeal if they were allocated such
schools. This could occur, particularly, in urban areas,
which generally have schools with the lowest crude
examination performances.
Discussion
This paper has presented a geography of choice and
diversity in the ‘new’ education market. It has illustrated the uneven development of the market across
England by considering two key components of the
reforms: school diversity and parental choice. It has
been argued that diversity in the UK education
system is best considered in the form of a private–
state continuum, and that at the local level there
appears to be six levels in the development of a
380 Taylor
private–state continuum. Each one of these represents a milieu of school development, the product of
over a century of education planning and provision.
They begin to reflect how recent education legislation has impacted differentially across England,
creating a mosaic of education markets, each one
offering different choices and constraints for parents
in the market place.
In addition, it has been shown that the level of
parental activity in the market place has also
occurred at different levels across England. Clearly,
there are many potential explanations for the varied
levels of market activity seen across the English
education landscape. For example, this variation
could be related to the differential bureaucratic
procedures employed unevenly across England by
each LEA, the uneven accessibility to schools across
England or the varying levels of school diversity
offered in each market place.
Further research is required to begin linking the
two components of the education market, choice
and diversity, to see how legislative change impacts
upon secondary school provision. This paper has
shown that the secondary education market in
England is not homogeneous, both in terms of the
type of schooling available to parents, and in the way
parents have been able to respond as consumers in
the new market form of provision. This has significant consequences upon the impact of these
reforms, in the way policy makers and academics
evaluate them and, consequently, in the way they
are developed in the future. Clearly, the geography
of education has a particular role to play in further
research and policy advances.
References
Adler M, Petch A and Tweedie J 1989 Parental choice and
educational policy Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
Ambler J S 1994 Who benefits from educational choice?
Some evidence from Europe Journal of Policy Analysis
and Management 13 454–76
Ball S 1993 Education markets, choice and social class: the
market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA British
Journal of Sociology of Education 14 3–19
— 1998 Big policies/small world: an introduction to international perspectives in education policy Comparative
Education 34 119–30
Ball S, Bowe R and Gewirtz S 1995 Circuits of schooling: a
sociological explanation of parental choice in social class
contexts Sociological Review 43 52–78
Bartlett W 1993 Quasi-markets and educational reforms in
Le Grand J and Bartlett W eds Quasi-markets and social
policy Macmillan, Basingstoke 125–53
Benn C and Simon B 1970 Half way there: report on the
British comprehensive school reform McGraw-Hill,
London
Bradford M 1990 Education, attainment and the geography
of choice Geography 75 3–16
— 1993 Population change and education: school rolls and
rationalisation before and after the 1988 Education
Reform Act in Champion T ed Population matters: the
local dimension Paul Chapman, London 64–82
— 1995 Diversification and division in the English education system: towards a post-Fordist model? Environment
and Planning A 27 1595–612
Bradford M and Burdett F 1989 Privatisation, education
and the North–South divide in Lewis J and Townsend A
eds The north–south divide: regional change in Britain in
the 1980s Paul Chapman, London
Brown P 1990 The ‘third wave’: education and the ideology
of parentocracy British Journal of Sociology of Education
11 65–85
Burdett F J 1988 A hard act to swallow? The geography
of education after the great education reform bill
Geography 73 208–15
Chubb J E and Moe T M 1988 Politics, markets, and the
organisation of schools American Political Science
Review 82 1065–87
— 1990 Politics, markets, and America’s schools The
Brookings Institution, Washington
— 1992 A lesson in school reform from Great Britain The
Brookings Institution, Washington
Coates B E and Rawstron E M 1971 Regional variations
in Britain: studies in economic and social geography
Batsford, London
Cutler T and Waine B 1997 Managing the welfare state 2nd
edn BERG, Oxford
Department for Education 1988 Public expenditure white
paper HMSO, London
Dore C and Flowerdew R 1981 Allocation procedures
and the social composition of comprehensive schools
Manchester Geographers 2 47–55
Dronkers J 1995 The existence of parental choice in The
Netherlands Educational Policy 9 227–43
Fitz J, Halpin D and Power S 1993 Grant Maintained
schools: education in the marketplace Kogan Page,
London
Fitz J, Taylor C, Gorard S and White P 2001 Local
Education Authorities and the regulation of educational
markets: four case studies. Measuring markets: the case of
the ERA 1988 occasional paper 41 Cardiff University
School of Social Sciences, Cardiff
Forrest K 1996 Catchment 22: new admissions system for
schools are not making parents happy Education 8
March, 8
Gewirtz S, Ball S and Bowe R 1994 Parents, privilege and
the education marketplace Research Papers in Education
9 3–29
Glatter R, Woods P A and Bagley C 1997 Diversity,
differentiation and hierarchy: school choice and parental
Choice and diversity in secondary education
preferences in Glatter R, Woods P A and Bagley C eds
Choice and diversity in schooling: perspectives and prospects Routledge, London
Gorard S and Fitz J 1998 The more things change . . . the
missing impact of marketisation? British Journal of
Sociology of Education 19 365–76
— 2000 Markets and stratification: a view from England
and Wales Educational Policy 14 405–28
Hirschman A 1970 Exit, voice, and loyalty: responses to
decline in firms, organisations, and states Harvard
University Press, Cambridge
Lauder H 1991 Education, democracy, and the economy
British Journal of Sociology of Education 12 417–31
Le Grand J and Bartlett W 1993 Quasi-markets and social
policy Macmillan, Basingstoke
Menahem G, Spiro S E, Goldring E and Shapira R 1993
Parental choice and residential segregation Urban
Education 28 30–48
Taylor C 2001 Hierarchies and ‘local’ markets: the geography of the ‘lived’ market place in secondary education
provision Journal of Education Policy 16 197–214
381
Taylor C and Gorard S 2001 ‘Local schools for local
children’ and the role of residence in segregation, Measuring markets: the case of the ERA 1988 working paper 39
Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Cardiff
Tooley J 1997 Choice and diversity in education: a defence
Oxford Review of Education 23 103–16
Waslander S and Thrupp M 1995 Choice, competition,
and segregation: an empirical analysis of a New Zealand
secondary school market, 1990–1993 Journal of Education Policy 10 1–26
White P, Gorard S, Fitz J and Taylor C 2001 Regional and
local differences in admission arrangements for schools
Oxford Review of Education 27 317–37
Whitty G 1997 Creating quasi-markets in education: a
review of recent research on parental choice and school
autonomy in three countries Review of Research in
Education 22 3–47
Whitty G and Edwards T 1998 School choice policies in
England and the United States: an exploration of their
origins and significance Comparative Education 34
211–27