This valuable book by Mike Feintuck and Roz Stevens makes an important call for the democratic consideration and defining of aims and values underpinning the organisation of formal education. The authors argue that a lack of a coherent settlement within contemporary society regarding what education ought to be ‘for’ has led to a ‘values vacuum’ (p. 178) in the making of policy. Such a vacuum, it is argued, presents problems for democratic accountability – if policy makers are not clear on the purposes or goals of education, then can they ever assess properly whether or not institutions are upholding the right sorts of principles or indeed delivering what they should be delivering?

Within the realm of school admissions, the authors argue that a shift away from local education authority (LEA) planning in England towards an increasing reliance on case law, appeals and legislative structures has led to a focus on individual procedural fairness, with the result that more collective, substantive questions about fairness in school admissions are being increasingly overlooked. Assertions of individual legal rights on the part of parents as they seek to access ‘good quality’ schools for their children are problematic because, cumulatively, they have wider systemic effects on the school system in terms of pupil and school segregation and inequality. However, legal systems are not equipped – and it is beyond their scope – to engage in political considerations of what are and what should be the limits of parental choice. ‘Fragmentation and de-democratisation’ (p. 17) of school admissions and appeals processes in England, then, it is argued, risk leading to a system in which there is a lack of overview regarding matters of school segregation, with potentially significant implications for social justice.

Building on introductory arguments, the book is structured around a critical assessment of three contrasting administrative frameworks for the organising of school admissions: systems of local planning; quasi-markets (‘choice’); and the use of random allocation methods (‘chance’). While LEA planning dominated in England between 1944 and 1988, from 1988 onwards the introduction of quasi-markets altered the English school admissions landscape dramatically. Since the mid-2000s, experimentation in local authorities (albeit in limited forms) with random or ‘lottery’ methods for allocating pupils to schools has grown significantly.

Regarding LEA planning, the authors argue that school admissions in England up until 1988 were characterised by problems of local inequalities and also problems of democratic legitimacy. Low voter turnout and apathy in local elections meant that LEAs could not be said to be acting truly in accordance with the full wishes and interests of parents. Low electoral turnout, however, might be considered less problematic democratically than later quasi-market reforms, in which accountability is argued to have become increasingly privatised. Competition between schools within quasi-market systems creates incentives for the exclusion of more vulnerable students, and alongside growing autonomy for schools to control their own admissions procedures there is a risk that schools will act unaccountably and that such exclusion will be insufficiently regulated. Diversification between schools is presented as being important within government policy; however, the authors argue that there is a lack of clarity over why diversity should matter, particularly in a context where ‘choice’ is not enjoyed equally by all.

The book goes on to provide a highly comprehensive account of the development of government attempts under Labour to regulate marketised school admissions at the national level from 1998 onwards through measures such as a School Admissions Code and the creation of an Office of the Schools Adjudicator. Building on the work of those such as Noden and West (Reference Noden and West2009), the authors note a prioritising of procedural over substantive justice concerns. Exploring random allocation methods in school admissions, a case is made for the potential that such methods might have, if applied radically, for creating greater equity in the English schooling system. The authors make a convincing counter-case, however, in arguing that the distribution of such an important good as education should not be left to ‘blind chance’. Reasons given for this are less to do with equal or unequal outcomes and more to do with process. Random allocation of pupils to schools, while a useful thought experiment and perhaps not constituting ‘frightening’ or ‘twisted’ social engineering as suggested by the Mail on Sunday (see p. 141), is argued simply not to be in keeping with traditions of deliberative reasoning over values and principles that are important for ensuring accountability in public services and indeed central to life in a liberal democracy.

This book will make a useful teaching and research resource for Social Policy scholars, connecting as it does detailed exploration of the most up-to-date legislative and policy reforms on admissions in English education with critical ‘bigger picture’ discussions about democracy, accountability and social justice. Feintuck and Stevens should be commended for their timely publication of what can be read in many senses as a caution to policy makers, highlighting the risks of a ‘crisis of accountability’ that could stem from unbridled school autonomy in a period of mass conversions of schools into Academies and ever increasing ‘governance by contract’ in England. Resorting to a promotion of randomness in the allocation of school places may be viewed by some as a panacea in policy terms, but it can also be noted that the effectiveness of such promotion will be limited in a context of simultaneous moves within central government towards deregulating school admissions procedures. ‘Chance’ is described by the authors not as a panacea but instead as ‘intellectually lazy and democratically unsatisfactory’ (p. 170). Ultimately, the use of random methods is felt to be a poor substitute for a more complete theorising of the values that matter in education systems alongside democratically accountable institutions tasked with working towards delivering on those values.