COMPREHENSIVE schools are operating covert selection with some using every possible device to avoid admitting the dim and the difficult, says new research from Sheffield Hallam University.

The researchers found popular schools deliberately admitting slightly more pupils than they had room for, to avoid any risk of being asked to take in excluded or unwanted pupils at the last minute.

A study of practice in 141 local education authorities also found a rising proportion of specialist schools selecting 10 per cent of pupils by “aptitude”. Some then used the siblings rule to increase the proportion of talented children. In some cases, the tests supposedly being used to find “aptitude” in areas like technology were identical to those used to test for general ability.

One admissions officer for a school with an intake of 300 admitted they tried to end up with a higher number: “What we don’t want to do is to be falling below 300 because clearly then the local authority would ask us to take on pupils and there are two categories they might ask us to take.

“One would be children in trouble from other schools, which would be a bad risk... or they are going to be children who are refugees who have significant learning and social problems.”

Another school, a mixed comprehensive in a wholly selective surburban area, was so desperate to reduce its intake of working-class children fleeing from the inner city that it had got rid of the siblings rule.

The research team, led by John Coldron, professor of education at Sheffield Hallam, says that selective admission is found in a minority of LEA areas and a minority of schools in those areas. Only one in five authorities had schools that selected part of their intake by general ability or aptitude.

But, although only 9 per cent of parents reported that a test formed part of the application process, parents in about one third of the LEAs experienced some form of selection.

“The existence of even one selective school in an area could trigger significant responses (either aggressive or defensive) from other schools and have far-reaching effects,” the study says.

It also points out that the problems are worse for parents in areas of partial selection, with specialist schools and foundation and aided schools relatively free to set their own criteria.

They warn that the polarisation of intake caused by selection will get worse as the number of specialist schools increases in line with Government aims. The study found the proportion of specialist schools selecting part of their intake on the basis of aptitude had risen from 7 per cent of the 238 designated by 1997 to 11 per cent of the 395 designated by 1999.

The researchers recommend reducing the selective proportion of the intake to specialist schools to 5 per cent or lower.

E-mail: j.h.coldron@shu.ac.uk