20% families refuse to send their children to local schools

More than 30,000 placing requests were made to local authorities across Scotland last year by parents who did not want their children to attend their local school.

A total of 26,765 of the requests were successful - accounting for about 20 per cent of the 127,600 pupils who enrolled at primary, secondary or special schools at the start of the 2003-4 academic year.

Under a law introduced by the last Conservative government, every parent has the right to request that their child attend a school outwith their catchment area.

Councils are free to consider each request, but can agree only if there is sufficient capacity and teachers to deal with the increase in pupil numbers.

The statistics, which were released by the Scottish Executive, reignited the debate concerning how much choice parents have over where their children are educated.

The Scottish Tories’ education spokesman, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, said his party would extend choice by giving parents a "pupil passport", which would allow them to send their children to the school of their choosing.

He said: "There are still over 3,000 children in Scotland who are denied the choice of which school to attend. What’s more, I am sure that there are many, many more who simply do not submit a placing request because they do not think their request will be met.

"Under our proposals, where the funds will follow the pupil, we will offer parents real choice as to where to send their children and ultimately guarantee that there will be a substantial extension of freedom of choice."

According to the Executive statistics, the number of parents submitting placing requests has remained fairly constant over the past decade. In 2003-4, 64 per cent of placing requests related to pupils about to enter primary school, 35 per cent concerned secondary pupils and the rest referred to youngsters attending special schools.

The Rev Ewan Aitken, the education spokesman for the local authority umbrella group COSLA, said the legislation covering placing requests led to tension between councils and parents who are turned down.

He said: "Placing requests create a set of difficulties for a number of reasons, but the biggest challenge is provided by the expectations that have been created among parents.

"Councils can only grant a request so long as it doesn’t lead to more school buildings being built or more teachers being employed to deal with it, so what we can offer in terms of choice is quite narrow. That leads to tension between parents and the authority.

"Local authorities have a responsibility to make sure that every school is as good as possible so that parents don’t have to make placing requests.

"But there are some which maybe aren’t, or there’s a perception that they aren’t, which is why some parents make these choices."

Eleanor Conor, the information officer with the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, urged parents to send their children to their local school.

She said: "If everyone wanted to send their children to the one school, what would happen to all the others?

"There is room for parental choice, but we would encourage parents to think very carefully about putting their children in their local school and improving their local school rather than sending them elsewhere."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive said there were no plans to change the current rules governing placing requests.

She said: "Parents have the right to put in a request for any school, but there are several criteria that councils can turn it down on.

"If the school the parent wants their child to go to is already at full capacity, or if there aren’t enough teachers to cope, then that would be sufficient grounds for refusal."