Use ballots in selection of school places, says Sutton Trust

The admissions system for schools with more applicants than places should be made fairer and less complicated, and the best way of achieving this goal is by allocating places through a ballot, a leading think tank has claimed.

The Sutton Trust commissioned a report from researchers at the University of Buckingham, which found that leading comprehensive schools are highly socially segregated because of their admissions and selections processes rather than their location.

The report – Worlds Apart: social variation among schools – found that grammar schools are more inclusive than the country’s top comprehensive schools.

The leading 164 comprehensives took only 9.2% of children from income deprived homes, although they drew pupils from areas where about 20% were income deprived. Grammar schools by contrast admitted 13.5% from poor homes.

The researchers also revealed that comprehensives with the least advantaged intakes seem to take more than their fair share of disadvantaged students. Nearly 40% of children in these schools were from deprived areas, although 30% of children in their localities come from deprived homes.

The report found that despite the government’s schools admissions code being mandatory, “there is still enough wriggle room for schools that want to ensure a favourable intake to enable them to show up well in league tables”.

On admission processes, the report said a ballot would lead to a more equitable education system. “It could be used in conjunction with other criteria, for example ability, faith or location, but ultimately places should be settled by parental preferences with ballots where necessary.” It called on the main political parties to say in the run up to the election whether they agreed with this approach.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “Deployed alongside other selection criteria, ballots are the fairest way of deciding school places in over-subscribed schools. There has to be some way of choosing which pupils are admitted, and ballots offer the same chances to all children irrespective of their background.”