Ten fight for each school place

Finding a place in one of London's top secondary schools is getting more and more difficult with some schools nearly 10 times oversubscribed.

Parents face an unprecedented scramble for places in good state schools, equivalent for the lucky few of winning the educational jackpot.

A survey shows that in more than half London's most successful state schools, three parents are chasing every place.

Thousands are now hearing the news they dread; that successful schools have turned their children down, because they have failed entrance tests or, in non-selective schools, because classes are full.

They now face the nightmare prospect of appeals and a nervewracking wait for spare places in less popular schools.

For some, the wait will continue past the beginning of the new school year in September, either because no place is available or, increasingly, none parents are prepared to accept.

Last September, 60 children in Lambeth still had no place and 150 in Enfield started being taught in a library. In Southwark, 150 parents set up their own school rather than send their children to a former failing one.

Some boroughs only finally managed to find enough places last year by using their reserve powers to instruct schools which were full to take more children.

An Evening Standard survey of the 32 boroughs suggests the most popular schools are more heavily over-subscribed than last year.

Of those that achieved the best exam results last year, 17 are oversubscribed for September by more than 300 per cent - Oxford and Cambridge universities receive three applications for every place.

Latymer in Enfield and Haberdashers' Askes, Lewisham, had almost 10 for each place.

Underlying the squeeze on places is a bulge in population as Baby-Boomers have their own children.

The Funding Agency for Schools, responsible for Grant Maintained schools under the Tories, estimated that in 2005 there would be a surplus of just 470 secondary places across London - but only if parents were denied a choice. Even then, 15 boroughs predicted they would not have enough places.

The extra numbers are adding further strains to an already complex system of school admissions.

Many boroughs are dominated by church and former grant maintained schools, to which parents have to make separate applications. These schools control their admissions and can, critics claim, hand-pick their own pupils.

One in seven pupils crosses borough boundaries to go to popular secondary schools, creating further difficulties for local parents.

The Government is proposing new powers for education authorities to co-ordinate admissions.

But several boroughs which are net importers of pupils, because of their good schools, are planning measures of their own to protect local parents.

Camden, Richmond, Bromley and Westminster are all considering introducing new criteria for their own community schools - whose admissions they still control - which would give priority to children from local primary schools. Richmond hopes eventually to persuade church and former grant maintained schools to adopt the same policy.

Meanwhile in boroughs whose schools have a poor reputation, parents are refusing to accept places in those seen as sub-standard. In Hackney, Lewisham, Southwark and Lambeth, parents have launched campaigns for new non-denominational, non-selective schools, even though others have spare places.

In Southwark and Hackney, their fight appears to have resulted in Government proposals for flagship City Academies. In Lewisham, parents are forming their own political party to fight local council and Mayoral elections on the single issue of the need for a local school.

The head of one of the most oversubscribed schools, Dunraven School, today urged parents rejecting less popular ones to give them a chance.

Richard Townsend, whose school admits pupils after tests to identify bands of ability, ensuring it is genuinely comprehensive, said: "We try to tell parents there are a number of good schools and they should not focus on just one.

"The reputation of a school doesn't always reflect present reality and it may be doing better than parents realise. If parents reject a school out of hand, improving it becomes much harder."