Equal preference: how does it work and what are its effects?

To keep things simple, forget about special cases and sibling links, to focus on distance from school

1. Everyone chooses three schools in order of preference, 1, 2, 3.
   
   
2. Initially everyone is put on the list for each school for which they have applied.
   
   
3. The list for each school is put in rank order, using only the distance criterion – nearest first. So at this stage, preference order has been ignored.
   
   
4. Suppose for simplicity that each school has 100 places. At this stage of the process there will be massive oversubscription, of course!
   
   
5. The really clever bit is what comes next. We check to see if there are people who are in the top 100 for more than one school. Maybe I am near enough to both Stringer and Varndean for this to be true for me, say. For each such person we eliminate the less-preferred school. So, in my example, if I had put Stringer above Varndean, I'd be crossed off the Varndean list, letting no.101 on that list move up into the top 100.
   
   And now you just carry on doing the deletions in this way, with people clicking up all the time into the top 100s, until there are no more to do. What have you now got? You have got a top 100 for each school (maybe fewer, of course, for unpopular schools) and nobody now can be in the top 100 for more than one school – otherwise there'd be another deletion to do. So all of those top-100 places are confirmed.
   
   
6. You will be left with a group of people who did not get into the top 100 for any school, and so have not got any of their three choices, and you will be left with corresponding spare places at unpopular schools.

What are the effects?

Basically, this method promotes distance over choice and that is why cause4EB are against it. Under the current system, if you live in Elm Grove, and you put Stringer first, you will be chosen ahead of someone nearer in who put Varndean first and Stringer second but failed to get into Varndean. Is that fair – or not?! Equal preference tends to reduce the number of first preferences satisfied, as this example shows: apparently, the fall can be quite big, say 10%

Which system is better?

Sensible people can differ over this, because you can take a variety of views on the relative importance of distance and choice.