There are more myths about school choice than almost any subject in education. Politicians of all parties promise to increase it – and successive governments have introduced expensive programmes to that end – but little changes for most of the population.

The Conservatives had their city technology colleges and incentives for schools to opt out of local authority control, Labour has its academies and trust schools. Both have promised to make it easier for parents to set up their own schools, but the “market” in state education barely exists in most of England.

As the Policy Exchange report Choice? What Choice? acknowledges, school choice is largely a London obsession. Almost three times as many parents appeal against their child’s allocated school in the capital as anywhere else. The same goes for most areas in which a high percentage of families shun local schools – because they can.

Half of the authorities whose schools are rejected by at least 10 per cent of parents are in London and the rest are all urban areas where alternative schools are within travelling distance. Some, such as Lambeth and Hackney, have had well-documented problems in some of their schools and a growing middle class who will seize opportunities to go elsewhere.

Others, such as Harrow, are well up the league tables but are surrounded by equally high-performing schools. In Reading those who do not win a place in the two highly selective grammar schools may try their luck in the neighbouring Slough and Buckinghamshire equivalents before accepting a Reading comp.

Some might call this parental choice in action, but it is not a choice that exists in Land’s End or the Lake District. Nationally, a majority of parents do not even express a preference for a particular primary or secondary school. They are satisfied with the local school, or resigned to it for logistical reasons. As the Policy Exchange report notes, the number of appeals has barely altered in ten years.

Academies are the latest hope of those who believe that real competition is needed to increase standards, but the Policy Exchange detects signs that Gordon Brown’s version of the programme may be reined in to an extent that prevents it offering genuine choice.

— John O'Leary is a former editor of the Times Education Supplement

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