Sutton Trust calls for use of ballots to make admissions process for oversubscribed schools fairer

The World's Apart — Social Variation Among Schools report found that the leading comprehensives are more likely to offer places to pupils who don't come from disadvantaged backgrounds than grammar schools. The study also revealed that in the 100 most "socially selective" comprehensive schools, on average 8.6 per cent of children come from income-deprived homes despite being situated in areas where 20.1 per cent of children are from poorer families.

In the report's foreword, Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, writes: "Deployed alongside other selection criteria, ballots are the fairest way of deciding school places in oversubscribed schools. There has to be some way of choosing which pupils are admitted, and ballots offer the same chances to all children irrespective of background."

The trust also recommends that top schools should be allowed to expand where feasible and that new schools should automatically use the ballot system to help allocate places where oversubscription is a problem.

The findings follow last month's government announcement that more than 83 per cent of pupils will go to their first-choice secondary school in September, while 96.6 per cent will attend one of their preferred schools.