ALL secondary schools should be free to set their own admissions policy and decide which pupils they accept each year, according to Maidstone and the Weald MP Ann Widdecombe. The Tory MP made the call in a debate in the Commons in which she highlighted the problems for many parents in the county when it came to decisions about which school to apply to.

She said many parents in rural villages were told at the start they had no chance of securing a place at their preferred mixed-ability or high school because they lived too far away. "Every year, one or two villages are told right at the start that their children will not be admitted to big successful schools such as the Cornwallis school and Angley school [which are] heavily oversubscribed. Every year, children are being told they will not be considered simply because they live a certain distance from the school," she said.

The reason was that schools based decisions on whether families lived within a certain radius of the school, rather than considering whether the school in question was nearest to the child. The result was that parents endured the "anguish of being told right from the start that their children will not be able to go to large popular schools of their first choice."

"The solution...would be to free schools to set their own admissions criteria and not to place artificial constraints on them. It should be made extremely clear that schools can reject children who live close to them and accept those who live further away if that leads to greater parental choice across the area as a whole," the MP said.

Minister Margaret Hodge dismissed the idea saying that it would add to the chaos, produce greater differences and would lead to more distress to parents and families.