Schools to select pupils by lottery

Under a controversial new Admissions Code, places at popular State schools will be awarded at random, without regard to whether a child lives nearby.

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It means that children in middle-class areas will no longer gain automatic entry to a local school, but could instead find themselves being bussed to a failing or even notorious school across town.

The scheme is being piloted in Brighton. But parents there have launched an angry rebellion and enquiries to local private schools have risen by more than 100 per cent. Other parents say they will simply move away from the area.

Education experts saw the Brighton backlash as a precursor to a series of battles between parents and Government that will spread across England and Wales.

Government advisers say they have no intention of backtracking and are determined to leave the way clear for other local authorities to copy the Brighton example.

The new Admissions Code, which applies to pupils starting school in September 2008, encourages councils to allocate places randomly where schools are oversubscribed, rather than drawing pupils solely from the surrounding area.

The aim is to break the middle-class "stranglehold" over the best schools, which families maintain by paying a premium for houses nearby.

A recent survey said that a "catchment premium" typically adds £25,000 to the cost of a home. But now there are warnings that the prices of these 'premium' houses will tumble in areas that adopt the Brighton experiment.

Under the scheme, the names of all applicants for a school go into an electronic "hat" and are picked out at random by a computer program.

Outraged parents packed a public meeting last week at Brighton Town Hall to protest against allowing a computer to decide where their children should be educated.

They complained that, in the name of social engineering, their children were being condemned to schools with poor exam results and a high proportion of disruptive pupils in order to make room at good local schools for pupils from low-income backgrounds.

The Admissions Code, which came into being earlier this year, suggests that head teachers should promote "equality and diversity" by selecting pupils at random.

Only faith schools, which make up about 20 per cent of the total, and the few remaining grammar schools are given some protection from the lottery principle.

Under the pilot scheme, Brighton has been divided into six new catchment areas that combine both suburban areas and council estates, so that most include both a failing and relatively successful school.

The lottery will allocate surplus pupils between them.

Private schools in the town have reported a doubling of enquiries since the system was announced.

A recent open day at Brighton College attracted more than 500 parents compared with 250 last year. St Mary's Hall independent school for girls reports a similar surge.

This means, ironically, that the lottery scheme threatens to widen rather than narrow divisions between the haves and have-nots.

Dr Martin Stephen, the High Master of St Paul's School, an elite fee-paying boys' school in West London, predicted a boom in business for the sector if the lottery system were introduced nationally.

"My heart goes out to parents who have to trust their children's education to a lottery," said Dr Stephen, a past chairman of the Headmasters' Conference.

"Random allocation in the State sector is not exactly going to harm independent schools. The biggest threat to us would be the return of decent local grammar schools."

Richard Cairns, head teacher of Brighton College, said: "There has been a significant rise in interest from parents with children in State primary schools, virtually all of whom expressed deep concern about the council's recent changes."

Nick Gibb, the shadow Schools Minister, said the Government would face damaging political consequences if local authorities followed the Brighton lead.

"We are opposed to bussing children across towns for reasons of social engineering," he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said the lottery option had been recommended to schools "to stop families using the housing market to buy access to the best schools".

He said: "Random allocation is one of the options available to local authorities. The ultimate decision is for them to make, and it is not for us to dictate what works best for them."

Schools 4 Communities, a protest group in Brighton opposed to the new system, now plans to mount a legal challenge.

If that fails, members of the group who cannot afford to go private say they will consider joining together to provide home education.