Early day motion tabled by primary sponsor Frank Dobson (Labour), on Tuesday, 4 November 2003, in the House of Commons. It is signed by 82 members in total.

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SCHOOL ADMISSION PROCEDURES, PUPIL ACHIEVEMENT AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION

That this House welcomes the launch of Comprehensive Future, the campaign to modernise secondary school admission procedures; welcomes the Government's revised Code of Practice on School Admissions; further welcomes the publication of the Audit Commission/Ofsted Report, The Influence of School Place Planning on School Standards and Social Inclusion; notes the criticism of current admission procedures contained both in the June 2002 report from the Council of Tribunals and in the July 2002 report issued by the Schools Adjudicator; further notes the evidence of abuse of current procedures documented in research recently published by the London School of Economics; regrets that more children in England now face overt and covert selective admission procedures to secondary school than in 1997; recognises the impracticality of the 1998 Grammar School Ballot Regulations; further regrets the denial of parental choice intrinsic to admission systems in which schools select children; is aware of the growing body of evidence linking selective systems of secondary education to lower overall levels of pupil achievement and higher levels of social exclusion; and calls on the Government (a) to request Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools to conduct an inquiry into the relationship between selective admission procedures, pupil achievement and post-16 participation rates and (b) to request the Social Exclusion Unit to conduct a parallel inquiry into the relationship between the structures of secondary education and levels of social exclusion.

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Secondary information

Type

Early day motion

Reference

1859 

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Admissions Disadvantaged Grammar schools Schools Secondary education

Link

View this Early day motion on www.parliament.uk