Second council adopts lottery scheme to decide school places

A second council is using a controversial lottery system to determine allocations to its most popular schools, it emerged yesterday.

Hertfordshire County Council is using a "lucky draw" system in its seven oversubscribed single-sex schools. The most popular is St Albans Girl's School - whose GCSE results are way above the average for the country with more than 80 per cent of girls getting five A* to C grade passes compared to less than 60 per cent nationally.

Hertfordshire's decision - which led to the lottery being used to determine places for this September - will re-open the debate over single-sex schooling. Girls outshone boys in almost every national curriculum test, GCSE exam and A-level last summer - prompting calls from several prominent educationists for girls and boys to be taught separately in future either in single-sex schools or classes.

Officers in Hertfordshire, which is embarking on a secondary education review acknowledge, they may face demands from parents to open more single sex schools as a result. Unlike Brighton and Hove, which announced it was introducing a lottery for all its secondary schools earlier this week, Conservative-controlled Hertfordshire has introduced the new system without the fanfare of national controversy. It says it will only use the lottery - once other criteria such as giving priority to children in care or with special needs, those with older siblings at the school or for whom the school is the nearest have been exhausted. It may therefore find that hundreds of parents are competing in the lottery for just a handful of places once those criteria have been exhausted.

The six schools for which the lottery system has been used are Hitchin Girls' School, Hitchin Boys' School, Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School, Presdales - a girls' school in Ware, Verulam - a boys' school in St Albans, and Richard Hale, a boys' school in Hertford.

Disappointed parents will have an opportunity to appeal against the decision to refuse them a place at the school of their choice.

They will be among thousands facing an agonising weekend as they decide whether to enter what could be a lengthy appeals procedure to get their first choice school. Letters, sent out on Thursday by every one of the 150 local authorities in the country, were arriving on parents' doormats yesterday - telling them whether they have been successful.

Last year, 83,000 parents appealed after being refused their first choice school - around one in three appeals was successful. Local authority leaders expect a similar number of appeals this year.

Labour-controlled Brighton and Hove took its decision to introduce a lottery from next year to stop well-off families buying houses near oversubscribed schools creaming off all the places. It believes the system, which is backed by a new admissions code introduced by the Government this week, will be more socially just.

Disappointed parents will be scouring the websites set up recently to help them appeal. These include www.ace-ed.org.uk which charges £1 to download guidance and also offers free advice by telephone on 0808 800 5793. Other sites charge up to £2,000 for help.

Popular with both parents and pupils: St Albans Girls' School

It has a glowing reputation in the neighbourhood - and is also the only single sex school for miles around. As a result, St Albans Girls' School has 645 parents vying for just 178 places - making it the most oversubscribed in Hertfordshire.

It is just one of seven single sex schools in Hertfordshire for which the lottery has become part of the selection process for new pupils.

"There are fewer single schools than mixed - so that tightens the opportunities for parents that want a single sex education," said headteacher Chris Miles. "Also, there are a lot of Muslim families that want single sex education for their children." She can see some of the advantages of the lottery system - in that it provides parents with an equal opportunity of getting a place. The lottery is administered by County Hall removing any pressure on the head for its outcome.

According to Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, the school's overall effectiveness is "good and it provides value for money". "The school is well established and rightly popular with parents and its pupils," it adds.