"Schools will not achieve high standards if they do not support all children to achieve their best," she wrote in Children Now in May. "There is no contradiction between standards and care: no contradiction between excellence and inclusion." She has also said exclusion can only be eradicated if children do better at school.
In theory, this is hard to question, but reconciling admission policies with academic performance targets is a different story in practice.
Parliament's education and skills select committee has found that secondary schools' admissions policies and the Government guidance they are based on generally fail looked-after children (see News, p9). Schools are told to give priority to children in care when they are oversubscribed, but the rule is frequently ignored.
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