0 Comments | Western Morning News, The, Sep 3, 2010
A controversial “lottery” designed to allocate school places fairly has failed to reduce segregation between rich and poor pupils, research suggests today.
Richer pupils are still dominating places at top-performing schools in Brighton and Hove, and poorer pupils are missing out because of the way school catchment areas are drawn up, according to a study by the Institute of Education and Bristol University.
Brighton and Hove introduced a lottery system, the first of its kind, two years ago following concerns that there were unequal opportunities for rich and poor families to access the best schools.
The theory behind Brighton’s reforms was that by using a lottery instead of the distance from a child’s home to a school as a measure of allocating places, every child would have the same chance of winning a place.
Alongside the introduction of the lottery, new catchment areas were drawn up.
Within each of these areas allocations for places is random.
Today’s study, which looks at the first two years of the lottery, concludes that there have been “winners and losers”, but so-called “social segregation” – the dividing of pupils based on income – has not significantly reduced.
It says that the way the new catchment areas have been established means that in general, families in the poorest neighbourhoods still have little chance of getting into the popular schools that are in the city centre.
This is because a particular school may not be in their catchment area.
The study was due to be presented at the British Educational Research Association’s annual conference at Warwick University today.
