§ Mr. Robert B. JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will set out in a table for each local education authority(a) the number of children starting secondary schools at the start of the 1987–88 academic year, (b) the number of complaints he has received or been notified of where parents are not satisfied with their child's allocated school for 1987–88 and (c) the number of children who, following complaints, were subsequently reallocated to the school of their choice in 1987–88.
§ Mr. DunnInformation on the number of children admitted to secondary schools at the beginning of the48W academic year 1987–88 has not been collected centrally. Information on complaints in respect of individual local authorities cannot be provided except at disproportionate cost.
Where parents do not get the school they want for their child, it is open to them to appeal to an independent local appeal committee, whose decision is binding on the local education authority or school governors concerned. From informal inquiries made in 1985, it appeared that some 9,000 such appeals were made in that year, of which around 40 per cent. were decided in the parents' favour.
The Secretary of State does not consider an admissions complaint unless the case has first been referred to the independent local appeal committee, and his powers of intervention in such local matters are extremely limited. In calendar year 1987, the Secretary of State received over 380 complaints about school admissions decisions in England but did not consider that there were grounds to intervene under sections 68 or 99 of the Education Act 1944 in any of these cases. It is not known how many of the pupils concerned were subsequently allocated a place at their preferred school or at another school acceptable to their parents.