Blog of Jean Samuel

Monday evening I attended an event hosted by Canterbury high School run by Comprehensive Future

Comprehensive Future is the campaign for fair school admission policies in England. The campaign is non party political and open to all.

Individual supporters include school staff and governors, parents, MPs from across the parties, local councillors, academics and other public figures who share a commitment to equality of opportunity within our education system. That number now includes me.

They lobby Government, provide evidence, inform the media and support local campaigns on admissions.

Comprehensive Future wants England to have a secondary school system which guarantees an equal chance to all children. They want to end entry tests where schools select children for secondary education by ability and aptitude. The effect on children who fail these tests to secondary education can be awful. They are passionate that no child should start secondary school feeling a failure.

To achieve it they believe the wider objectives of Government policy should be to:

·         ensure the availability of high quality schools in all our communities

·         encourage parity of esteem between schools however diverse and, as far as possible, balanced intakes in all secondary schools in terms of ability

·         provide  the opportunity for all children to attend a local school if their parents wish, within the inevitable constraints of transport, location and buildings

·         ensure admission policies and practices are fair to all parents and children.

The meeting was led by Fiona Millar from Comprehensive Future and was attended by a wide mix of people: parents, teachers, private tutors, local politicians who supported the abolition of the Kent Test.

Discussion covered why our current Labour Government had not done this during the past 12 years and the difficulties of mounting a successful challenge to a selective system via the ballot system.

The imminent publication of the Govt report on the National Challenge, which might have been a useful spring board, sounded like it could be a disappointment . You may remember that Kent had a high nmber of schools deemed to be failing under the National Challenge criteria and a special report was commissioned to look into why.  To many in the field the answer is a ‘no brainer’ –selection at 11 plays a major factor. Some interviewees present told us, however, that the interviewing team made it clear that issue of selection was taboo and would not be covered in the Report. So the Report would avoid the very core of the problem. Very disappointing.

Suggestions for gaining support and momentum for change in Kent included:

·         engaging with parents way before their children reached the Kent Test age

·         making a case for the wider benefits to children’s physical and social well-being

·         emphasizing the negative impact – money and environment - associated with pupils travelling across the county each school day

·         address the negative emotions to the term ‘comprehensive’ and focus on explaining that a non-selective system still allows for streaming

The event confirmed my commitment to abolishing the Kent Test