Schools lottery as families wait for pupil places offer

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Around 600,000 parents nationwide are bracing themselves today - "national offers day" - for the letters from authorities telling them whether they have been successful in applying for a place at any of their six preferred schools.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls has admitted there will always be a conflict between parental choice and fairnesswhile there are not enough good schools to meet demand.

"They're in conflict if you have some schools which are good and some schools which are under-performing," he told Labour's spring conference.

The Government has been encouraging schools to use lotteries and "fair-banding" admissions tests as a way of making sure middle-class families do not exert a stranglehold on places at the best state schools in the capital.

But figures obtained from the Department for Children, Schools and Families by the Tories showed that parental choice is the most restricted in London's deprived inner city boroughs.

Just 51 per cent of applicants in Southwark got an offer from their first choice school last year, compared with 97.6 per cent in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

Sir Mike Tomlinson, former chief inspector of schools watchdog Ofsted, said a lottery approach had "all sorts of problems".