ROLL up! Roll up! It's the annual school fete - and time to buy raffle tickets for the tombola.

Top prize this term is... a place at a top-performing secondary school?

It sounds bizarre but, as Tony Blair and Michael Howard clash furiously about the best way to guarantee parents can send their children to their school of choice, it may one day become reality.

As I head into my 30s, I am becoming acutely aware that one day in the not- to-distant future the girlfriend - a teacher with a class of 24 kids - may decide we should have one of our own.

When we do, I shall doubtless join the legion of parents poring over exam results and league tables and ingratiating ourselves with any local governors unfortunate to cross our path.

So I'm becoming (slightly) absorbed with the ins and outs of what the main party leaders are saying about the glut of parental choice we are likely to get during the next few years.

The Tories were quickest out of the starting blocks.

During a series of key speeches, they unveiled plans to scrap traditional school catchment areas and allow headteachers to select pupils on ability.

Because the Conservatives will make it easier to build new schools, and for good ones to expand, all parents will be able to choose whichever school they like. It doesn't sound convincing, does it?

Everybody knows increasing selection actually hands the power to choose not to mums and dads, but to head teachers and governors.

No doubt the savvy middle-classes (perhaps including me) will cleverly work the system and get the school we want, away from those pesky, badly-dressed kids from the council estates.

But less-fortunate children will be herded into sink schools and forgotten. It will be a return to grammars and secondary moderns, by the back door.

What about Labour's plans, outlined yesterday?

The Prime Minister has pledged "no return to selection", yet every school will become an "independent specialist" by 2008.

They can pick pupils with particular "aptitude" for that specialism.

And there will be more city academies and faith schools, which can also do some choosing.

It sounds like selection to me.

Blair is convinced Labour must not be outflanked on "choice".

But the inevitable result is that the less able will be lumped together in the same schools, where they drag each other down. Even the alternative to selection - the use of catchment areas - fails to give every school a balanced intake, because wealthy parents snap up homes close to the best schools.

A ten per cent improvement in test results at 11 can push up house prices nearby by seven per cent. Admission officers end up walking around local streets with a tape measure.

The problem appears unsolveable. Until we come back to the prize draw - a suggestion by a left-leaning Government-approved thinktank called the Social Market Foundation.

It's boffins suggest school places would be decided by... drawing winners out of a hat.

Every parent would list six preferences, choosing any school they wanted, but a ballot - not someone's choice - would decide.

Because it's random, it would guarantee a mixed intake everywhere, without the tortuous bureaucracy of selection and appeals.

Let Lady Luck decide!

Updated: 10:49 Friday, July 09, 2004