School Offers
Issue- Today is National Offer Day when most local authorities will be sending out offer letters to parents on what secondary school place their child has got.
Key points
- Parents now have more choice because there are more good schools. In 1997, over 1600 secondary schools had less than 30 per cent of pupils getting 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths. That figure has dropped to 247 now.
- The vast majority of parents will get a place at a school of their choice - last year 83 per cent got their first preference. We've outlawed unfair and covert admission practices which penalised low-income families and increased social segregation. No ifs or buts - local authorities or schools must comply with the School Admissions Code.
- There is more to be done. Alongside our investment in teachers and our relentless focus on standards, we are expanding academies and trust schools and we have announced that parents will be given the right to ballot to bring in new leadership where they are not happy with standards in their local schools. We are also introducing new parent guarantees. There will be a guarantee of one-to-one catch up tuition for children falling behind.
- The Tories refuse to back our guarantees to young people and their Swedish school reforms would be costly and harm standards. They would scrap the national curriculum for their new schools and water down the expectation on schools to appoint properly trained teachers. They admit their policy would mean schools could be opened in rented office blocks and it could even lead to schools without playing fields in pre-fabricated buildings.
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