Adviser attacks school admissions by lottery

Sir Mike Tomlinson, a former chief inspector of education watchdog Ofsted, said the ballots added "all sorts of problems" to the already highly charged debate about admissions.

He was speaking as around 600,000 parents brace themselves for "national offers day" on Monday, when local authorities will post letters informing families whether they have secured a place at any of their preferred secondary schools. Sir Mike said the one obvious problem with admissions by lottery was "one child is 50 yards away from a school and doesn't get in, whereas another child 5,000 yards away does".

He continued: "There are going to be some real inequalities which are almost impossible to defend, beyond saying this is the luck of the draw.

"I find myself wanting to distance myself from it because the core problem is we don't have enough places at schools to satisfy demand. I think parents are right to say they want a good local school - that has to be the goal."

The new national admissions code drawn up by the Government to stop middle-class families monopolising the best state schools includes provisions for holding ballots when schools have more applications than places.

They have been adopted in Brighton and Hove and Hertfordshire, while individual schools using lotteries in London include Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green. The Government's admissions watchdog, chief schools adjudicator Philip Hunter, has said the ballots "have their uses in certain places" but he cautioned against their general adoption.

Sir Mike, who is now chief adviser to the Government's London Challenge programme for improving inner-city comprehensives, said he had learned from running the Learning Trust in Hackney, the not-for-profit company that took over from the borough's failing education authority, that city academies were one important way to provide more places at popular schools.

Hackney's first academy, Mossbourne, was now heavily over-subscribed and fewer parents were looking to send their children to school outside the borough for the first time in many years, he said.

But parents were the key to tackling low standards in middle-bracket comprehensives not earmarked for conversion to academies.

Sir Mike urged more parents to take advantage of legislation passed in 2006, which requires schools to recognise and deal with parent councils when they are set up.

He said new research showing that middle-class children did well in poorly performing comprehensives demonstrated how schools could improve if parents got involved.

"It gives you a body of adults who are articulate, who know the system and who, to put it mildly, can be a thorn in the side - to my mind, a welcome thorn in the side," said Sir Mike.