More absolute bollox on school choice lotteries from the Telegraph - 'children have lost out', apparently, because in the most popular schools, less kids got their first choice of school than last year, before the lottery system had been introduced in any local education authorities.
But that statistic is meaningless because it's entirely dependent on how many children applied for the school in each year! For example, if a school has 100 places per year, and last year 150 kids applied for a place, but this year 200 kids applied, then last year a third of the applicants would have been disappointed, whereas this year half of them were. But that's nothing to do with the lottery system - it's to do with the number of kids applying. And if a lottery system encourages parents who wouldn't have tried to get their kids into the best schools under the previous system to give the lottery a shot - what's wrong with that? Surely it's what the scheme is designed to do.
They'll be running a headline next saying 'National Lottery - the ticket-holders lose out'...
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