Pupils in a lottery

From the The Argus, first published Friday 15th Dec 2006.

The council's new proposals for admissions to secondary schools involve the introduction of a ballot system to determine the allocation of places when schools are oversubscribed.

This element of the proposals has been kept very low-profile in the council's own publicity about the new system.

As a result, many parents are either completely unaware of the proposed ballot or have the impression that it will occur infrequently.

In fact, under the equal preference system where all a parent's schools preferences will be counted, the ballot will occur every year in those areas. This means children hoping to go to particular schools in the proposed dual catchment areas will be subject to the ballot under the proposed Equal Preference system.

This method is, literally, a lottery (the term used by a member of the council in a recent public meeting).

The council's own research on the project states that "the ballot concept was very unpopular with adults" and "83 per cent DISAGREED that the ballot would contribute to a fairer method when schools were oversubscribed".

Furthermore, no other local authority in the country has combined the equal preference system with a ballot.

One of the objectives of the new proposals was that they should be easy to understand. The authors of this report have admitted themselves that the system is very complex.

Will the council rethink this rather than allow the children of Brighton and Hove to be guinea pigs in an untried system that is, literally, a lottery?