School admission policies

Some local authorities have been using lotteries to select pupils for secondary schools. This is likely to be banned. What should be done?

• No system will work with over-sized classes. About 15
• It is almost impossible to teach effectively if a class contains pupils with too wide a range of abilities
• There is a yawning class gap in Britain. From the point of view of education policy the difficulty is the existence of an underclass whose children do not want to go to school to work and are not encouraged to do so by their irresponsible parents.
• Some areas have concentrations of members of the underclass which causes difficulties for the schools within whose catchment areas they lie.
• Family life has become volatile amongst all social classes which makes for disturbed children who can be difficult to teach.
• Also within all social classes there are children who are difficult to teach and have special needs.
• There is the prospect of unemployment or drudge jobs for school leavers, which is a de-motivator.

Where is the policy to address these issues?