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Schools lottery as families wait for pupil places offer
Dominic Hayes, Education Correspondent3 Mar 2008
Thousands of London pupils find out this week if they have won a place at a desirable secondary amid warnings that up to half will be rejected by their chosen schools.
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".
Reader views (1)
There would not be this problem if local authorities did not have to worry about league tables for schools. Instead of sharing their resources around their schools all they worry about is keeping the good performing schools good so that they boast about them being high in the tables, instead of working and bringing the lower performing schools up to the same level. I know this as I'm a school governor for my daughters school.
- Ed, Surrey, 04/03/2008 12:00
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