For a long time now politicians have pretended to parents that they have choice of which school they send their children to.

They don't have choice, they can exercise a preference.

And pretending they have a choice is just not sensible in a world where there just aren't enough school places to fulfil those choices.

Personally, I would prefer to see a more uniform system of admissions so that schools take their children from their local community, but I can see that we have gone beyond that point now with so many own-admission schools.

I think the key point today is how the code is policed effectively because Jim Knight is saying that local authorities and parents need to challenge the local schools if they're not administering admissions fairly.

But that's a system that relies on someone making a complaint and fair systems don't become fair just because someone complains.

So I think we need a more rigorous system of policing what some schools are doing.

Not all parents can have their choice of school. That is simply not going to happen. Some parents will be disappointed.

We know that when you are admitting a child with special needs, that child is not going to contribute to your success.

I wonder whether there are occasions where children who are not making the grade perhaps do not have a fair crack of the whip.

Parents have been sold the moon with the choice and diversity agenda.

Fuelled by league tables, many parents now believe erroneously that only a few good schools are available to them.

That in turn fuels parental dissatisfaction and unnecessary appeals.

The sooner the government understands that the choice agenda undermines the spirit of the admissions code the better.

Instead of rationing access to a few good schools we need to create more good school places.

Our plans would allow good new schools to open in precisely those areas where parents are denied a proper choice.

The current system restricts excellence to a few.