School Choice and Transition

Abstract

In the United Kingdom, the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act, made law by the newly elected Labour Government, introduced a new framework of regulations for school admissions, which attempted to ‘alleviate the problems created by the development of a largely unregulated (education) market’ (West et al., 2004: 348). An associated Code of Practice (DfEE, 1999) was introduced for September 2000 admissions — a later version came into force in February 2003 (DfES, 2003a) — which obliged schools to provide information and guidance for parents on admissions procedures (and in particular on selection criteria in the event of over-subscription) for use by local authorities, voluntary-aided (mostly church) schools and foundation (formerly called grant-maintained) schools. The 1999 Code of Practice stipulated that non-faith schools should not interview parents as part of their admission process, and that faith schools should interview only to establish an applicant’s religious denomination and commitment. The revised (2003) code extended the interview ban to include children, except for boarding schools, but allowed for ‘auditions’ to take place as part of aptitude testing for places in Specialist Schools.