LettingFocus: Buying Close to a Good School Used to Cost You, But Not For Much Longer (Plus a “Bit of Politics”)

Parents have long paid out big money to buy properties near a decent school. But this may be about to change.
Brighton Council have now bought in a lottery system whereby children’s names will go in a hat and the school you go to is decided by lottery.
Why?
Well, the idea seems to be to stop middle class parents buying property near a good school and thus leaving the other schools without some of the best talent.
The government seems keen to adopt this approach countrywide shortly and if they do, it will have a big impact on prices close to good schools which will no longer command a premium.
We know all about this from personal experience, as the only decent boys’ secondary locally is 20 times oversubscribed, making it the most oversubscribed state school in the whole of the UK. Nice!
So, in the next few years, we either have to go private (ignoring my own political principles) or move to somewhere with more decent state secondaries - which is just cheating in a different way.
Of course, the exodus of families from cities like London to rural spots with good schools is massive and the lottery system won’t stop this one bit.
One thing that would help would be to force private schools to accept one third of pupils on merit or face losing their charitable tax status. (Bit of politics)

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