'We won - but we were lucky'

(Connors of Brighton)

There was a bitter wind blowing across Brighton yesterday. And although the spring sun still shone, there were many anxious faces on the school run as parents waited for the results of the UK's first lottery for places.

By lunchtime, Jacqui Rice was ecstatic discovering that her son Sam had won a coveted place at Blatchington Mill School, where 1,005 children applied for 300 places. "The lottery has given us a good result but it might not have done," she said. "The council likes to claim that more people get one of their school choices, but that's because they tell us which schools we have to choose."

The lottery was used to find places at two pairs of schools that share catchment areas. In Brighton the draw sorted pupils between the sought-after Dorothy Stringer School and its neighbour, Varndean. In Hove, the lottery allocated pupils between Blatchington Mill and the less popular Hove Park.

Tracey Narvaez, 40, had to make a difficult decision for her second son, Ryan. The rules stipulate that a child with an elder sibling already at a school has a good chance of getting a place there. So should she take up a place at Dorothy Stringer, which his elder brother attends, or risk going into the Hove lottery with his friends from primary school which could see him allocated to a less successful school, and still be separated from his friends?