State schools are selecting middle-class children by using overly complicated admissions criteria, experts say.
Hundreds of thousands of families will find out on Monday if they have the primary school place of their choice. About 1 in 10 missed out last year.
Poorer families are being bamboozled by the admissions process and schools are taking in more affluent children by the back door, according to a report published today.
Written by academics for the Sutton Trust, a charity that addresses social mobility issues, the report found that some schools were using up to 18 criteria for admissions. Many disadvantaged pupils could be missing out on places at top-performing state schools, the authors suggest.
They found considerable variation in how much primary school intakes diverge from