Parents in Brighton and Hove call for real school lottery (From The Argus)

Parents in Brighton and Hove call for real school lottery

11:00am Sunday 28th September 2008 in News By Andy Chiles

Parents have called for a "genuine" lottery for school places after claiming their children were trapped in a catchment for an unpopular secondary.

They said every child should have a fair chance of getting into any of the nine secondaries in Brighton and Hove and a widespread lucky dip was the only way of making that happen.

The families speaking out, from Bevendean, said they thought that kind of ballot had been brought in when the city changed its school admissions system last year because of stories in national newspapers.

It was only this month, when they came to make applications for their children, that they realised what had actually been brought in was a new network of catchment areas, including one which meant their youngsters would more than likely be sent to nearby Falmer High School.

Jean Wills-Taylor, of Meadowview, Bevendean, said: "All of the headlines in the papers said there was going to be a lottery for school places, so we thought that was what was going to happen, but in reality that’s not true, almost all of the places are done by catchments. My daughter won’t be in a lottery, we’ve got no choice at all for her."

Mrs Wills-Taylor said the catchments were unfair on areas like Bevendean.

She said: "In the past children from this estate have gone to Varndean or to Hove Park, they’ve travelled across the city and seen other places. Now they will be trapped here. All they’ll ever see is this estate and the school up the road. I don’t want that to happen."

She said she was particularly disappointed because her daughter Jamie, 10, was a talented actress who has been performing in The Sound Of Music in the West End and wanted to go to an arts specialist school.

Falmer High had the lowest GCSE results in the city this summer but has high scores for pupil improvement. It was undersubscribed this year and has no specialist status.

Education academic Keith Turvey, who campaigned against the new catchment system, said: "This is what we predicted would happen. The council tried to consult with every area of the city when they came up with the scheme but Bevendean, Whitehawk and Moulsecoomb were not well represented. Now people are realising what has happened too late."

The lottery part of the Brighton and Hove City Council system is only applied to divide pupils between two pairs of schools which share joint catchment areas. Those schools are Dorothy Stringer and Varndean, in Brighton, and Hove Park and Blatchington Mill, in Hove.

It is also used to decide which children get a small number of spare spaces at schools not filled by pupils from their own catchment.

Parents can give three choices of schools they want their children to go to but this year the vast majority were given a place within their catchment.

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman said: "We would recommend that every family reads the admissions booklet carefully and ensures that they include the school located in their catchment area in their preferences.

"Everyone can give up to three preferences so this does not prevent them from including other schools in their application."