School’s out if you’re in Catchment-22

This time last year, I was one of those parents. I pored over the vast, confusing information pack outlining in great detail which secondary schools were available to my eldest son. I spent hours sifting an array of facts and, briefly, became lulled into a false sense of security. Could I really get him into the excellent comprehensive that was in my neighbouring county? Apparently so.

In the end, I played safe. I listed first my closest state school a very good school just under five miles away and then carried on in descending order of proximity to my house. It all seemed so simple.

Yet my son was not offered a place at this school but at another more than eight miles away. My first choice of school was over-subscribed so it had been "ring-fenced": suddenly, I was out of catchment. In the end, I appealed. I got teachers to write in his support. I filled in endless forms and read endless booklets about who had the rights to what.

I did wonder how this system benefits anyone. I am a bright graduate who knows how to work within a system. I know how to fill in forms and activate small armies of support to fight my cause. But what about the people to whom the endless forms are gobbledegook? What about those who don't know how to bend the rules to get what they want? I would have crawled on my hands and knees to have got under the ring-fence. If a school is over- subscribed, it's over-subscribed. Your child cannot go there because the school is full, and the school is full because it is good and everyone wants to go there. The reality of parental choice has become a ridiculously convoluted Catch-22.

In the end, I went on the waiting list and got a place before the appeal came up. I just happened to get lucky in a process in which luck is supposed not to figure at all.