| School lottery 'fails in aim' |
By: Rebecca Hubbard
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Posted: Friday, September 3, 2010 9:35 am
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The controversial lottery system that allocates secondary school places has been criticised once again by academics as it has failed in one of its key aims - to give poorer children equal access to the best schools.
Brighton and Hove, the council to introduce England's first city-wide lottery two years ago, still claims the system to be far fairer than the previous one.
A lottery is used on top of a catchment area system.
The area is first divided into separate catchment areas. If a school in an area is over-subscribed with applications, a lottery is then utilised as a tie-breaker in order to decide who gets a place.
The previous system elected pupils who lived closest to the schools, leading critics to name it a system where students were "selected by mortgage".
Changes in the system sparked a major protest in Brighton, but were declared by the Schools Adjudicator to be fair last year. |
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