Access to high performing schools has become more “geographically unequal”

Access to high performing schools has become more “geographically unequal”

A new report by the Education Policy Institute shows that access to top schools in England has become more geographically unequal over the period 2010-2015.

The report, ‘Access to high performing schools in England’ looks at the density of high-quality secondary school places across England, comparing high-quality places in 2015 with 2010 in order to identify whether geographic access to high performing schools is improving.

It finds that in spite of government policies aimed at improving school performance outside higher performing areas such as London, access to top schools has become more unequal.

According to the EPI, virtually all local authorities with consistently low densities of high performing school places are in the North, particularly the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber. In Blackpool and Hartlepool local authorities there are no high performing secondary school places.

However, from 2010 to 2015, local authorities with consistently good access to high performing secondary schools saw the proportion of pupils with access to such schools rise from 49 per cent in 2010 to 58 per cent in 2015. Many of these areas are in London.

But, in areas with consistently low densities of high performing school places, the proportion of pupils with access to such places fell from just six per cent in 2010 to five per cent in 2015.

These include areas such as Blackpool, Hartlepool, Barnsley, Redcar and Cleveland, Knowsley, and Middlesborough.

When analysing access to schools at a disaggregated, neighbourhood level, in both 2010 and 2015, the report states that one fifth of local areas in England had no high performing secondary schools within reasonable travel distance. This means pupils in these neighbourhoods are unlikely to have had any opportunity to access a place at a high performing school.

Examining the 20 local authorities with the largest increases in the density of high performing secondary school places, and the 20 local authorities with the greatest decreases, the widening geographic inequality in access to high performing schools is also evident.

Of the 20 local areas with the biggest increases in high performing school places, 16 of which were in London, the proportion of such places rose significantly from 36 per cent to 60 per cent from 2010-2015. The largest riser was Harrow.

However, of the 20 areas with the largest fall in high performing places, none of which were in London, the proportion of high performing places fell from 31 per cent in 2010 to 20 per cent in 2015. The biggest faller was Blackburn with Darwen.

The report also shows that there are large areas of the country which currently have no access to a high performing school. Of particular note is the North East, which as a region has virtually no high performing schools. Despite this, no part of the region has been selected as one of the government’s Opportunity Areas.
The EPI says that if the government believes that introducing the Opportunity Areas initiative would address the lack of access to a high performing school, then its analysis suggests that there should be one in the North East.

https://epi.org.uk/report/access-to-high-performing-schools/

Read more