The best, the worst and the average: secondary school choice and education performance in East London

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether the distance between school and the pupil’s home is related to social background in a six borough area of East London. Also investigated is the extent to which schools in the area perform in line with expectations on the basis of the social composition of their intake. The research involves analysis of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) to which geodemographic codes supplied by Experian have been attached. We demonstrate that the six schools in the area which achieved the highest average points score at GCSE recruit pupils widely from within the area (and to a lesser extent outside), whilst the lowest performing six schools recruit from much more narrowly defined catchment areas. In terms of school performance, we show that whilst we might expect schools to perform better as they become more distant from inner East London and nearer to the M25, this is not necessarily the case. In our conclusions we argue that these data support the claims made on the basis of ethnographic data about the class nature of school selection and parental choice.