Record high number of Hampshire parents get school of choice

5:00pm Friday 8th March 2013 in Basingstoke By Emily Roberts, Chief Reporter

THERE was good news for more than 12,500 parents in Hampshire who found out their child had secured a place at their secondary school of choice.

But it was disappointment for the remaining 500, who applied through Hampshire County Council, when they learned last Friday that they had not gained a place at their preferred school.

The council’s admission service offered 99.5 per cent of parents a place for their child at one of their chosen schools, with 96.2 per cent given their first preference – a record high for the county.

A small minority – 65 parents – were not given a place for their child at any of their chosen secondary schools.

Councillor Roy Perry, Hampshire County Council’s executive lead member for children’s services, said: “I am delighted to see that an overwhelming majority of Hampshire children have been able to get into a secondary school of their choice this year – 99.5 per cent is a very high success rate indeed when compared with rates elsewhere, and is an improvement on last year’s figure.”

He added that there will be disappointment for those who did not secure a place at one of their chosen schools, and said: “That is because they applied to schools with exceptionally high demand.

“It is a mark of the high-quality teaching in Hampshire schools that some have attracted more applications than there are places but it really is only a very small proportion of the total number of applicants who have been unable to get a place at one of their preferred schools. The vast majority will be attending a school of their choice.”

Those without a place at their chosen school will instead be allocated a place at the nearest school with places.

He reminded parents that they can appeal or put their child’s name on the school’s waiting list.

The admission team is now handling the primary school applications, with offers due to go out on April 16, and they have experienced heavy demand for places because of the rising numbers of births and increasing numbers of families moving into the county.

In response to this demand, the council has committed more than £160million to provide an additional 8,000 primary school places in Hampshire.

Comments(9)

Marina Morris says...
1:33am Sat 9 Mar 13

Pretty please sir, don't make me go to Brighton Hill!

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ewoagjkl says...
5:45pm Sat 9 Mar 13

Marina Morris wrote:
Pretty please sir, don't make me go to Brighton Hill!
A few years ago Brighton Hill was the one to go to.

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JJ38JJ says...
1:31pm Mon 11 Mar 13

I wonder how many more would have chosen somewhere else if they thought they had any chance of being successful?
It's not really a free choice is it? You are able to express a prefrerence but at the end of the day you are limited to the admissions criteria and the size of the school.

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Sam_Walker123456 says...
1:47pm Mon 11 Mar 13

You are right JJ38JJ, there is no more a free choice of school than there is of hospital or any other public service. It is a big con. The only people who have free choice are the ones who can afford to pay for it :-)
Unless we pay for private education we should have no choice of where to send our children. But, and it is a big 'BUT', we should then work extremely hard and do whatever it takes to insure ALL schools deliver a high standard of education regardless of catchment area.

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JJ38JJ says...
2:04pm Mon 11 Mar 13

Personally I don't think private education should be allowed. We are all created equal (apparently). The fact that one child has a better head start than another is based on their parents' bank balance rather than on their intelligence is archaic.
I'm certainly no socialist, what you make of your life and how much you earn according to hard work and luck is purely Darwinian. But everyone should be given the same opportunities in life friom day 1.

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Sam_Walker123456 says...
10:45am Tue 12 Mar 13

Wishful thinking I'm afraid JJ38JJ. There is no good reason to abolish private education. The more people who are prepared to reduce the strain on the state system by paying for their children to be privately educated the better. But state education must be improved to make private education less attractive. It might also help if no private school could have charitable status to remove any tax advantages. If you did manage to abolish private education you still would not get rid of inequality - the better off would pay for private, after school tuition and buy extra learning resources for their children. Also we are not born equal and it is not and never will be an equal or fair society. Forget about those born with a silver spoon in their mouths and think of those born to intelligent, motivated parents who take an interest in their childrens education. Then compare them to those born on a sink estate where nobody works and they are more concerned about the next drink/fag/fix than their children's welfare. Money helps but there are too many other inequalities in life to ever achieve a level playfield.

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JJ38JJ says...
12:39pm Wed 13 Mar 13

There is a good reason. The private sector can pay what they want so they can lure the best teachers with higher salaries compared to LEA funded schools. The same is true in any industry sector. Scrapping the private sector would share the better teachers out across state schools.

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robertspet8 says...
4:52pm Wed 13 Mar 13

JJ38JJ wrote:
There is a good reason. The private sector can pay what they want so they can lure the best teachers with higher salaries compared to LEA funded schools. The same is true in any industry sector. Scrapping the private sector would share the better teachers out across state schools.
The private sector is subject to market forces and cannot pay what it wants to lure the best teachers. All recent surveys show that public sector teachers are better qualified, better paid, work fewer hours, have greater benefits and more job security than those in the private sector. However the private sector is more likely than the public sector to employ specialists or experts in their fields and will pay more for these.
Your statement seems to assume teachers are motivated by pay, but there is far more to it than that. Private schools can be very selective and therefore they tend to have pupils of a much smaller spread of abilities. Add this to better behaviour and smaller class sizes and we can see why some teachers might find the private sector attract despite the pay and hours - especially teachers who would struggle to get a job in the public sector because of their poor second from an ex-poly rather than a first from one of the red bricks.
Teaching is a vocation and I believe most teachers want to make a difference to children's lives and they decide which way to do this based on many factors, but pay is probably one of the least important to them.

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Sam_Walker123456 says...
5:18pm Wed 13 Mar 13

robertpet8, state schools have to employ qualified or newly qualified teachers but private schools do not. So private schools can be a way into teaching for people who cannot afford the time or money to spend a year or more getting a teaching qualification.

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