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Please see the introductory post for background to this very long post.

As both concepts exist within the current UK education system, this post will argue that, though exit has helped to make the schooling system more efficient and responsive to the choices of parents, neither exit nor voice is an effective means of achieving or securing equitable ends in education. Despite evidence which contends that exit has been part of a package of reforms that have resulted in significant improvements in the quality of school achievements — and especially in poor areas and the least good schools — it is argued that a number of important factors show that inequity is, in fact, worsening as a result of these reforms, and that voice mechanisms compound this problem. These factors include cream-skimming, schools responding to exit by overt and covert selection and the existing admissions appeals procedure. It is suggested, however, that exit — supported by voice mechanisms — can be made to achieve both greater equitable and efficient education outcomes if the right policy conditions are put in place. Such policy conditions would include non-selective enrolment — perhaps even a system of random allocation — and some form of socioeconomic weighting in order to address the issue of cream-skimming, so that the link between class and educational outcomes is finally broken.

The concept of "exit" is easy to define: it is the withdrawal of a person from a particular system, and is very often associated with "choice". As such, "exit" and "choice" are considered in this post to be, for ease, essentially synonymous. There are several ways someone can exit from a system. They could physically move to a new location, move from public to private service providers, or move to a different provider though still in the public sector. In education, exit can be thought of as a parent removing a child from a school when its performance is inadequate — this inadequate performance often being the reason for a parent to choose to remove their child. This post, in a similar fashion to the majority of the literature, will consider exit only to schools in the public sector.

In a fashion similar to "exit", the concept of "voice" is also easy to define. In a formal sense, it is the process by which a user makes an "attempt to change, rather than to escape from, an objectionable state of affairs". Informally, "voice" is a series of mechanisms by which users can express dissatisfaction with the organisation providing a service. Within education, voice mechanisms include informal approaches, such as talking to teachers or campaigns, or more formal methods of communication such as complaining to the headteacher, talking to governors, or complaining to the Local Education Authority or Department for Education and Skills. These approaches represent both the private and public ways in which voice can be expressed: whereas complaints can be see as a form of private (i.e. individual) voice, the process of voting, say, or collective action around an issue (such as campaigning against a school closure, for example) are forms of public voice.

The concepts of "exit" and "voice" were developed primarily by Hirschman, who was concerned that the availability of exit through choice led to a decline in voice activities. As part of this argument, Hirschman suggested that a greater possibility of exit undermined voice as one of the ways an organisation achieves efficiency — namely voice — since those that voice "agitate" in order to keep services efficient. Hirschman used the example of deterioration in public schools to demonstrate his point, concluding that exit "abets rather than checks deterioration".

Hirschman's work has become of relative importance in the UK's education system (and other sectors such as health) with the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act (era). This Act introduced "open enrolment" into the education system, which is to say the ability to enrol a child at any school of their parent's choice. In doing so, it extended the right to choose a pupil's school from previous education Acts and created what was in effect a voucher system — a system in which the cash followed the pupil. Thus, era was considered a means of achieving diversity and responsiveness in schools to accommodate the preference of parents. Although the reforms introduced by era looked to increase both exit — primarily as the direct consequence of choice — and voice, the focus was most clearly on the ability to exit. Indeed, the 1993 Education Act extended choice and diversity in schools, whilst little further was said formally about voice.

The final concept to be introduced is the "end" to which either exit or voice is to be assessed the more effective. This is not so simple. As suggested above, era looked to achieve efficiency and responsiveness in schools as they seek to accommodate and meet the preferences of parents. This is not the same as making schools more equitable, which is considered here to be the crucial "end" to which any education reforms should be the means. Consideration of this topic, then, will therefore form the substantive element of this post.

Briefly, though, to consider the most effective means by which efficiency and responsiveness is achieved, the literature would suggest that exit, which has been brought about by choice, has been more effective than voice. This is to say, choice has helped to make services more responsive and more efficient — a view shared by both supporters of choice and those who do not support choice. It has been suggested that the lack of an exit avenue means a lack of incentives for those providing a schooling service. Similarly, voice alone doesn’t make schools better, since, if there are no alternative schools to attend, then parents can do little other than to voice their dissatisfaction with the current standards.

Having briefly codetermined exit to be more effective in achieving efficiency and responsiveness in education, this post turns to its main consideration: is exit or voice the more effective in achieving the ends of equity in education?

There is no doubt that there are many who consider choice — that is, the right to exit — to have had a positive impact on equity in schools. Similarly, others have argued that the reforms made to schools policy since 1997, of which choice is a chief feature, have acted as an "external spur" to schools and resulted in significant improvements in the quality of school achievements. Furthermore, so far as equity is concerned, these improvements have taken place not just on average, but especially in poor areas and in the least good schools. Though he admits it is true that parents cannot get their children into the most popular schools — since such schools don't expand to meet demand — it is suggested the threat (that is, voice) of parents taking away a child or not choosing a school if it is bad acts as a "real incentive" for schools to worry about results since they would no longer bring their money with them. In sum, it is argued that exit has contributed significantly to greater equity in education, and that this contribution is supported by voice.

Attached to suchconclusions are a number of caveats. The key caveat is that these results are part of a general trend towards equity insofar as exam results are concerned — in the words of some, "choice has not interrupted [this] trend". Though there may be a correlation between choice and this continued trend, it is not possible, then, especially given the other reforms that took place at the same time, to say that parental choice — that is, exit — is the only cause of these continued improvements.

The problem of causation is not the only difficulty with those who advocate choice and their conclusions. For example, the performance of schools in poor areas, or with a high percentage of poor pupils, is still dramatically below that of even the average school in an absolute sense. More damaging is the issue of cream-skimming, which can be thought of as taking those pupils that will "bring the greatest return for the least investment". In education especially, cream-skimming is a real problem, as even advocates of choice admit. Some present a rosy picture where cream-skimming is concerned, and suggest that it is not only better schools that have been the most successful in attracting better pupils, but that the poorer-performing ones have been successful, too. At the same time, however, it is admitted both that deprived schools face very little competition for places and that there has been "too little effort" to offset the incentives to cream-skim.

The distinctly un-rosy picture that is reluctantly hinted at is part of a negative side of the exit route to which other commentators are only to willing to contribute their opinions. Some, for example, conclude that quasi-markets in education, which include the power of exit as a main component, make existing inequalities worse. One such factor that contributes to this worsening is schools who have responded to the introduction of choice by introducing covert selection as well as the targeting of desired pupils — a response predicted by opponents of choice and rejected, wrongly, by its supporters. This post agrees that the resultant issues of cream-skimming and schools selecting pupils instead of the other way around points to an overwhelming flaw in the current choice set up, rendering exit ineffective as a means of achieving equity. The reality of exit results in both cream-skimming and selection and confirms Hirschman's fears that "[v]oting with your feet" isn't available to all.

Indeed, the demand for places at better schools, which is created by choice, has had a disproportionately negative effect on children from lower-income families, so that "English choice policies are further disadvantaging already disadvantaged groups". In combining the twin issues of choice and selection, it has been shown the selection criteria used by over-subscribed schools — criteria which include catchment area, distance required to travel to school, family religion and, of course, ability — are more likely to result in inadvertent discrimination against lower-income families than not. That is, exit is an effective way of achieving inequity as opposed to equity.

It is also the case that the small forms of voice available to parents to address the problems of adverse selection procedures appear to compound the problem. The appeal process which exists to address unsuccessful applications for school places requires both "financial and social capital" to navigate it — characteristics that aren’t generally to be found in those with lower socioeconomic profiles. Whilst reiterating the fact that the use of voice is not free for those that choose to use it, the appeal process also provides an indication of the ineffectiveness of voice in achieving equity.

There are other reasons to consider voice ineffective as a means of achieving equitable ends: voice favours the better off; the middle classes are most likely to be school governors — a manifestation of the conclusion that the higher the social class (as determined by income) the most likely people are to participate and hence to "voice"; and there is a direct correlation between those who are dissatisfied in the education provided to their children and exit from the public to the private sector. Knowing that the take up of choice is skewed towards parents higher up the socioeconomic scale, then, along with the increased likelihood of the same group voicing their dissatisfaction, it is difficult not to conclude that richer parents are the ones most likely to express their voice as well as being most likely to exit the system. Parents with lower socioeconomic profiles are left behind, and precisely because they are "locked" into their current education provision have no choice but to voice their concerns. It may be the case that those considered to be most disadvantaged by choice are those who want it the most (because of the disadvantages of the existing education system) — especially because they see it as one way of being able to move their children out of "sink" schools. But, whereas "choice gives power to voice" for those with higher socioeconomic profiles, neither choice nor voice provides those who are left behind with the means to achieve equity, so that neither concept has done anything to affect the link between class and educational outcomes.

Finally, and putting aside the realities of who is and who isn't able to exit, all parents have had their choice confined to the state sector without the introduction of additional capacity through new forms of provision; this is to say that there has been a concentration on the demand-side of choice, rather than on the provision-side of schooling. As some have highlighted, the absence of a flexible mechanism for market entry in the state sector means few private schools have "opted in", whilst special measures have not, in general, been able to turn around failing schools and no one has resolved to close such schools down. Hirschman's question of what happens to the system (in this case, school) that has been exited from therefore becomes pertinent. One answer is as follows: poor schools are not closed down but stay open and continue to deteriorate for the very reasons they were failing — namely a poor and steadily reducing intake, declining funding as a result of this reducing intake and low morale. This is of little benefit to anyone, but especially not the disadvantaged, who are often the ones left using such schools.

The key conclusion of many studies is that exit "can work to improve the quality and the efficiency of state schools, given the right policy conditions" [emphasis added]. This conclusion relates both to equity and efficiency / responsiveness. However, and as this post has argued especially with regard to equity, the right policy conditions have not been created in the UK. Neither exit nor voice has been effective in achieving equity in the UK education system.

This is not to say that exit cannot be compatible with greater equity. The conclusions of an earlier report into school choice, along with practice from other countries and especially particular areas of the US, suggest what the right policy conditions might be for exit to be effective — both in terms of efficiency / responsiveness and equity. These conditions include ensuring a variety of school providers, perhaps even to the extent of making entry into and exit from the school "(quasi-)market" easier. They also include non-selective enrolment, perhaps to the extent of including random allocations of school places to those who enter a "lottery". Indeed, non-selective schooling in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s raised educational outcomes for exactly the groups the same policy would be introduced for now — average and below average pupils. Finally, socio-economic weighting, in order to make the money attached to children from poorer background greater as a means of combating cream-skimming, is also suggested and has been advocated by a range of authors. Though this is not to say there aren’t problems associated with some of these ideas, it is quite possible that, in such circumstances, choice, supported by voice, can lead to greater equitable outcomes in education.

This post has argued that neither exit nor voice is an effective means of achieving or securing equitable ends in education; notwithstanding this conclusion, exit has helped to make the schooling system more efficient and responsive to the choices of parents. Evidence which contends that exit has been part of a package of reforms that have resulted in significant improvements in the quality of school achievements — and especially in poor areas and the least good schools — has been shown to not take into account a number of important factors, such as cream-skimming, overt and covert selection by schools, and the existing admissions appeals procedure, each of which has shown that inequity is worsening and that those voice mechanisms which exist make the problem worse. It has been suggested, however, that exit, when supported by voice mechanisms, can be made to achieve both greater equitable and efficient education outcomes if the right policy conditions are put in place. These policy conditions would include non-selective enrolment (such as a system of random allocation) and a form of socioeconomic weighting that can address the major problem of cream-skimming. With these conditions (amongst others) satisfied, so can the link between class and educational outcomes be broken with the help of both exit and voice.

Tags — Politics