THERE can be fewer more emotive issues than where to send your child to school.
The days of grammar schools and selective education, with its dreaded 11+, may be a distant memory for many, but the modern system doesn’t seem quite right either.
Parents expect to be able to place their child in the secondary school of their choice, be it local or for the ethos on offer.
But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
And for some parents not being able to send their child to a school within walking distance is a frustration.
Again this week, our pages feature upset parents who are missing out of their first choice simply by not going to the ‘right’ school or living metres away from the boundary.
While the natural inclination might be to blame the borough council, this is a case of not shooting the messenger.
In these days of academies, able to create their own admission criteria, it is not the borough’s fault that it is unable to offer places to where they are wanted.
It is ultimately a flawed system and when it creaks, as it has done this year, it breaks.
The government needs to rethink this urgently, or else we’ll have this problem again next year.
The Voice of Wokingham is the editorial of Wokingham.Today