Access to ‘top’ schools has become more unequal, finds research
A child’s chances of getting into a high-performing secondary school increasingly depend on where they live, according to new research.
Virtually all of the areas containing few high-performing schools are in the North of England, analysis from thinktank Education Policy Institute (EPI) has found.
Local authority areas with consistently good access to high performing secondary schools – many of which are in London – saw the proportion of pupils with access to such schools rise from 49 per cent in 2010 to 58 per cent in 2015.
But in areas with fewer high performing school places – mainly in the North – only 5 per cent of pupils could access them in 2015, down from 6 per cent in 2010.
The new report from EPI comes just a week after the Department for Education published its Social Mobility Action Plan.
The plan has a “specific focus” on the third of the country with “the weakest educational performance and capacity to improve”, together with a continued targeting of the 12 Opportunity Areas that have been identified as social mobility cold spots.
But the analysis finds this will fail to help large areas that have virtually no high performing schools, like the North East, which has no designated Opportunity Areas.
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