This is fictional sample content, created to demonstrate the layout. The places, people and figures in it are invented. It is not reporting.
The admissions formula is not unusual. Straight-line distance from home to school gate is the standard tie-breaker across most of the country, and it has the advantage of being hard to argue with.
In Saltern Quay it produces a result that everyone involved agrees is wrong. The estuary splits the town, and the nearest crossing is four miles upstream.
We asked for five years of appeal records. Of 312 appeals heard, 58 turned on this single point. Forty-one succeeded, which suggests the panel agrees the formula is producing the wrong answer.
The authority says changing the measure would create losers elsewhere, and that appeals exist precisely to handle cases the formula cannot. Parents point out that an appeal is decided in July, after every other place has gone.
A walking-distance measure is used in two neighbouring authorities. Neither reports the problems officers here predict.
The conversation