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Adviser attacks school admissions by lottery
Sri Carmichael, Evening Standard27 Feb 2008
A senior Government adviser has criticised plans to use lotteries to decide which children win places at popular schools.
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.
Reader views (3)
Clearly your children don't have to conduct their education directly under Heathrow's various flight paths, with interruptions every 90 seconds, do they, Greg of St Helens? Nimbyism at its most shameful is in operation here.
- Ruth, Hounslow, 28/02/2008 12:11
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So much for the government trying to encourage people to walk to school, this will encourage more congestion and more traffic and fatter children. So much for walking buses and getting cars off the street in the morning school rush. Then to make matters worse the local children who can't get in to their local schools will also be driven to school so double congestion. I live in Tonbridge and it is hell in the mornings with traffic and pollution with the school run. When it is school holidays it is bliss to get around anywhere even by bus.
- Lisa, Tonbridge, 27/02/2008 18:34
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What's wrong with a lottery? After all school places are down to postcode lottery in any case. Why not have all the parents down the local town hall for 'eyes down' and a game of bingo. What better way to transfer to secondary school then a shout of 'house'.
Or perhaps, rather than persisting with a shortage of school places for the most deprived children, we could have a good local school for every child?
- Eric Ray, london,UK, 27/02/2008 15:38
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