A child’s priorities, to be fair, are probably limited to whether their friends will be attending the new school and the length of the journey there and back. It is the parents who really lose sleep over this transition from primary to secondary. Hours of research into league tables and Ofsted reports are just the tip of the iceberg. Some have planned this move before the child even attended primary school, by buying property in a good catchment area.

The Government seemed to recognise this concern from parents in its new Education Bill and, despite taking a firm stance on offering fair allocation to all, it claimed it wanted parents to be able to choose their favourite schools wherever possible.

“It will not always be possible for every parent to get a place at their preferred school but we want this for as many parents as possible. So we are making it easier for popular schools to expand. We are working in many ways to improve standards and attainment, so that every parent’s local school will be a good school,” wrote Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Charles Clarke in his introduction to the School Admissions Code of Practice, published in 2003.

Four years later and it seems that fewer, rather than more, families are achieving places in their schools of choice. The admissions system appears to be in crisis as up to half of all children have missed out on their first choice of school this year.

The biggest problems are occurring in those areas with the greatest choice of schools. In Wandsworth, South London, 48 per cent of children have failed to get into their number one school – the largest fail rate in the entire country. Over five thousand children in London failed to be allocated any school at all last month, even though each child specifies up to six choices.

And the real level of dissatisfaction is likely to run much deeper than official figures show. As Margaret Morrissey of the Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations told the Telegraph newspaper, “There are many authorities saying lots of children got a school of their choice – what they are neglecting to say is that it is often their third, fourth or fifth choice.”

Traditionally, the admissions process has been influenced by geography. Schools have been allocated pupils depending on where they live. This has led to houses in the areas feeding into good primary and secondary schools going up in price by as much as £42,000, compared to similar property in other areas.

Clearly this is an unfair situation, not only for poorer students but also for teachers who work at the schools.

A recent report told of a head teacher at a popular Nottingham comprehensive who had to live miles away from the school as he could not afford to buy a property nearby, such was the demand for places at the school.

In Brighton, the Labour-run council has decided to tackle this problem by running the admissions system as a lottery, allocating places to the most sought after schools by effectively picking names from a hat. While this may appear to be fairer, it has understandably outraged many parents who have already made the investment in order to get their children into the best schools.

Four thousand angry parents signed a petition against the move by the council, but similar plans are being considered in the Conservative-controlled Hertfordshire council and at a handful of single-sex schools throughout the country.

Of course affluent parents do have the choice of sending their children to a private school of their own choice but many of the parents affected by spiralling house prices are not wealthy. “It really angers me when I read about rich families pushing up house prices to send their children to the best schools,” says Penny Fraser, a mother from West London.

“We are not rich, I work and my husband works and we are being squeezed from all sides. If all the schools around here were reasonably good then there wouldn’t be a problem for us where we send our son but it’s just not the case. The difference between them is shocking. If we could afford a private school we would but that is simply not possible. We didn’t get into our first choice of school and now Ryan has a much longer journey to get in every day. I would love to be able to drive him but it would involve entering the Congestion area and that would cost another eight pounds a day. We are at the end of our tether.”

The situation becomes even more complicated when one considers that certain state schools such as faith schools and specialist academies are allowed some freedom to run their own admissions. Although they must abide by rules designed to stop selection, some say that this is exactly what is happening.

A recent report run by an influential think-tank The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says that allowing some schools to run admissions is leading to social segregation as some schools ‘cherry-pick’ bright pupils or those from more affluent backgrounds.

The IPPR says that local authorities should run admissions for all state secondary schools as those who act as their own admissions authorities are less representative of the social mix of their local area. IPPR director Nick Pearce said, “At the moment, schools that control their own admission arrangements are more socially segregated than the local communities outside the school gates. (This system) is like asking pupils to mark their own essays, while providing them with detailed rules designed to prevent them from cheating.”

Sarah Teather, Liberal Democrats frontbench spokesperson on education, agrees wholeheartedly with the sentiment behind the report. “We have always said it was a terrible idea,” she said. “We’ve tabled an amendment looking at an anonymised admissions process whereby the local authority (manages the process) and where schools are not able to see and select on the basis of knowing who the children are, even if they set their own criteria.”

Of course it is impossible to please everyone all of the time but the current situation seems to be leading to more losers than winners. The last Government research into school places was carried out seven years ago and revealed that just four per cent failed to get their first choice of school.

But it also showed that almost four times this number did not get into their “favourite” choice – the school they would most like to get into but did not apply to because they had little chance of success.

Perhaps a better way of gauging how successful the admissions procedures are, is by looking at the number of parents who lodge a formal appeal against the decision of school for their child. In 2005, 62,750 families appealed – more than double that of ten years earlier. Parents have two weeks from notification of their child’s school to lodge a formal appeal against any decision but only around a third are successful.

A number of websites have been created to help parents fight the decision. They charge anything up to £2,000 for a tailored service that can even include accompanying parents to a hearing. One website

www.schoolappeals.org.uk claimed to have 35,000 hits within a fortnight last year. Another, www.schoolselect.co.uk run by a group of former head teachers claims to have helped more than 100 families find the right school, winning more than 96 per cent of cases at appeal.

All of which goes to show that parents are willing to invest time and money in ensuring their children get the best possible education. And what could be more natural than that? “I feel like we are being penalised because we take an interest in our children’s education, that because we work hard and are middle class, we are seen as wanting to get something for nothing,” says Penny Fraser. “That’s not the case, I want a good education for everyone but I am a parent and obviously my son comes first. Why, when the Government is talking about parenting classes and sending parents to court for allowing their kids to play truant, are parents like us, who support our schools and communities, being given such a hard time?”

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