Mainstream state
The local school, with everyone else who lives near you.
A national curriculum, same-age classes, regular assessment, and an intake drawn from whoever lives nearby. It is the default rather than a philosophy, which is exactly why it belongs on this list: choosing it deliberately is a different act from ending up in it. The mixed intake is a real feature and, for many families, the main argument in its favour.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Accepting that you get the school you get, and that teaching quality varies inside it
- Being willing to supplement at home where the school is thin
- Sometimes, moving house — which is how selection works in a system without fees
How it gets misread
Treated as the absence of a choice. On the best available evidence it is the option whose measured outcomes are hardest to beat once intake is controlled for.
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: The Public School Advantage
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
The only row that asks for nothing. That is its strongest feature and it is rarely counted as one.
Source: Teaching and Learning Toolkit
What to read
Teaching and Learning Toolkit — Education Endowment Foundation
What actually moves attainment. Very little of it is about which philosophy a school signs up to.
The Public School Advantage — Christopher and Sarah Lubienski
The controlled comparison, and the most useful thing to read before paying fees.
Compared with
Sources for this row
Education Endowment Foundation. The best available summary of what actually moves attainment. Cited for the uncomfortable finding that most of it is about teaching quality and almost none of it is about the philosophy a school signs up to.
The Public School Advantage
Christopher and Sarah Lubienski, University of Chicago Press, 2013. Finds that the measured advantage of private and selective schools largely disappears once intake is controlled for. The single most useful source in this instrument and the least quoted.