Getting into popular schools can be a fraught business

Sometimes problems arose because the admissions criteria were vague, said the Local Government Ombudsmen.

Some complaints were handled very well - but too much practice was "poor, sometimes spectacularly so".

The report, School Admissions and Appeals, is intended as supplementary guidance on "a large subject" in which authorities had "difficult jobs to do".

'Sense of injustice'

The ombudsmen for England - Tony Redmond, Patricia Thomas and Jerry White - said they had 1,084 complaints about school admissions in 2002-03.

This can be a sensitive and sometimes highly contentious area for both admission authorities and parents Ombudsmen's report

"We do see examples of arrangements which, at the very outset of the admissions process, sow the seeds of later difficulties."

Special care was needed in the rules governing who gets in if there are more applicants than places available in a school - the over-subscription criteria.

"Many complaints arise because there is a sense of injustice through the way in which policies, procedures and codes of practice are applied," they said.

"This can be a sensitive and sometimes highly contentious area for both admission authorities and parents alike."

Faith schools

In one case the first criterion at a Church of England voluntary school was "families who attend the Church of England".

"When our investigator looked into a complaint by a parent who said that she did attend the Church of England and could not understand why the school did not place her under the first criterion, the head teacher explained: 'What that means is the parents must have attended church at least twice monthly for five years.'

"The criterion of course meant nothing of the kind. It meant what it said," they said.

In a Roman Catholic school, if there were too many applicants who met the first criterion of faith commitment, the criterion used was: "Reasons given for preference for education in a single sex Catholic girls' school."

But it was unclear how the authority made those decisions.

"The Ombudsman observed: 'The arrangements could easily give rise to the suspicion that the system favoured articulate and inventive parents who can think up a more impressive looking list of reasons than other parents can.' "

Preferences

Priority to children who have an older brother or sister already in the school "ought to be straightforward", they said.

But did the older sibling have to be at the school when the younger one joined - or only when they applied?

And who was included: half-siblings, step-siblings, adoptive siblings, other children in the same household such as foster children?

Having published their arrangements, admissions authorities needed to stick to them, the report said.

In a voluntary aided Roman Catholic secondary school, a girl was refused a place in part because the parent had not put the school as her first preference.

"But the admissions criteria made no provision for the governors to take account of whether the school was or was not a first preference."

'Outstandingly good'

Authorities are also warned to avoid conflicts of interest in dealing with applications, or appeals.

During one appeal, a parent did not wish her child to attend the school where the council had offered a place, because of what she regarded as low standards and poor discipline.

A panel member said he was a governor of that school and defended its suitability.

"It was hardly surprising that the parent complained to the Ombudsman that the panel was not independent."

"Some authorities are outstandingly good," said the report. But some persisted in arguing even when the facts were plainly against them.