Leaving education to chance

By Michael Blastland
Producer, BBC Radio 4's More or Less

Should "chance" play a role in a child's education?

Would changing the way school places are allocated be fairer to parents, students and schools, or are we better off with the system we have got?

Lotteries are a byword for unfairness.

If we call healthcare a "postcode lottery", we mean that it is unjust.

When we complain that life is a lottery, we mean that fate mocks our own attempts to control our lives.

Except when we want to win a heap of cash, when we quite like the idea of a flutter with chance, we think things are random enough.

So what do we make of a radical idea discussed in BBC Radio 4's More or Less to extend lotteries into many more areas of life, a provocative example being how we allocate school places?

In Lewisham in South East London, Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College Academy used to be selective. Now it admits some places by lottery.

Many local parents are resolutely opposed to the policy, saying they should be able to go to the nearest school. But Haberdasher's is oversubscribed and the places have to be rationed somehow.

This is about how you share out something lots of people

Barbara Goodwin, Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia and author of Justice by Lottery imagines a lottery utopia.

The school is oversubscribed? Take a ticket with a number on it and see if yours comes up.

On the housing waiting list? Draw lots.

Arguing over who gets the kids after divorce? Flip a coin.

In America, the Green Card system chooses among immigrants basically by a system much like drawing numbers out of a very large hat.

"Where you live is an accident too" says Professor Goodwin to the parents near Haberdasher's, who were there when the school was selective.

They were just lucky, she says, to live nearby when it became open to children of all abilities. A lottery just gives more people a chance to share in the luck.

"Forget the idea of gambling and the National Lottery," she adds, this is about how you share out something lots of people want; so better to talk about it as random selection.

The ones with most to gain from an increasing use of lotteries are the poor

And if we do not want to give school places according to ability - which the government has said is the case - we have to find a transparent way of showing that no-one has lost out through some other policy that could be thought unfair by one group or another, and that children have done nothing wrong if they do not get a place.

The lottery achieves both objectives, she argues: it treats everyone equally and says it is no-one's fault if you do not get what you want.

'Unfair' life

"It's hard to take" says one of the parents.

And it seems we really do not like the idea of losing control of our fate.

But Barbara Goodwin says that it is harder for people who are accustomed to getting most out of the system.

The ones with most to gain from an increasing use of lotteries are the poor. The implication is that life is already unfair, it is just more unfair for some than others, and all a lottery would do is spread out the unfairness (or the fairness).

Is she right? Could more of our school places be allocated this way?

Or should we use argument, measurement and testing to decide who gets what?

Or do these other systems, while claiming to be just, actually just disguise a different kind of bias?

Or here is another question: do you feel lucky?

BBC Radio 4's More or Less was broadcast on Thursday, 30 June, 2006 at 1500 BST. You can listen to the programme on Radio 4's Listen Again page.

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