Publication Summary
The early results of a recent, as yet unfunded, study of the impact of markets on schools suggest that schools in Wales have become less stratified since 1988 in terms of indicators of poverty and educational need (Gorard & Fitz, 1998). The Smithfield study in New Zealand, on the other hand, concluded that market-like systems of choice had made segregation worse by advantaging the already advantaged (Waslander & Thrupp, 1997). Commentators in England, impressed by the range of existing secondary evidence from England, as well as from the Smithfield project, showing a relationship between school choice and class, have suggested that the picture for Wales is entirely a Welsh phenomenon. This article shows that this is not so, and that early results from a similar analysis in England confirm that between-school segregation has declined since 1998. It goes on to suggest that a fuller consideration of the interaction of poverty, markets and public monopoly schooling can help to resolve the dispute. The finding...
CAER Authors
Prof. Stephen Gorard
University of Durham - Professor in the School of Education