Best Practice

Social justice and schools: Admissions

School improvement Narrowing the Gap Poverty
In a seven-part series, teacher and school leader David Anderson considers how schools can be a key driver for social justice and how we can make our education system more equitable. In part five, he looks at the problems with admissions – another mechanism by which the playing field is kept woefully uneven


SecEd series: A school system that drives social justice


Let us dive straight in. Just from the people known to me, I can list the following approaches to getting a child into the secondary school of choice:

I am sure you can come up with your own lists of the “games parents play” or the expensive hoops that more advantaged parents jump through to gain a secondary school. I must be clear: I am not pointing a finger at parents – it is the system that is unfair, not the actions of individuals.


Although only five per cent of students in England attend the 160 or so grammar schools, research suggests that only about 28 per cent of state schools are not affected by the presence of a selective school (Coe et al, 2008).

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