| Date: |
17 Mar 2020 |
Venue: |
Cambridge Assessment
The Triangle Building, Shaftesbury Road
Cambridge
CB2 8EA
|
| Time: |
16:00
-
18:30
|
| Type: |
Seminar |
Fee: |
Free |
*Please note that this event has been postponed. Due to the current Covid-19 situation we are taking steps to minimise risk to our staff and visitors by cancelling large meetings. We are currently looking to rearrange the seminar for a later date - please look out for further communication in the coming months.
Since 1988, parents have notionally had the right to choose the school that their child attends. More precisely, they can choose to apply to their preferred school, but with no guarantee that their child can actually enrol there.
There are many prevailing myths around school choice; the first being that parents have a 'free' choice. Another being that parents from poorer households don’t care which school their child attends and will just select the nearest one.
At this Cambridge Assessment Network seminar, Professor Anna Vignoles FBA will explore some of these myths using a new large-scale national dataset, providing a rich empirical description of how the school choice market functions.
Analysing the choices of all parents seeking a school place in state secondary schools, Professor Vignoles explores the number of choices made by parents, the extent to which parents really do choose their nearest school and how likely different types of families are to get an offer which will enable their child to attend the school of their choice.
She will discuss how parents pro-actively use the choice system and show the extent to which the current school choice system penalises poorer families.
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About Cambridge Assessment Network seminars
Through inviting authoritative voices in education to share their expertise, our seminars aim to inform and stimulate debate on current issues in assessment. As well boosting your CPD, these free events are an opportunity to network and share insights with other professionals from the wider education community.
About the speaker
Anna Vignoles is a Professor of Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. Anna undertakes research into how we can improve students’ academic achievement and help them develop the skills they need in the labour market.
She has a particular interest in researching the inequalities we see in access to education (globally) and, in the UK content, the lower levels of educational success of children from poorer families. She also studies the economic and social outcomes from education.
Anna has been advisor to Dame Shirley Pearce’s Teaching Excellence Framework review, is on The Sutton Trust Advisory Board and has advised numerous government departments, including the Department for Education, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and HM Treasury.