HUNDREDS of Dorset schoolchildren have missed out on places at their first choice school.

Just 71 per cent of 10 and 11-year-olds in Bournemouth were offered their first preference secondary school in letters sent out to parents today, lower than the national average.

In Poole, where applications rose from 1,757 last year to 1,968 this year, 72 per cent will be offered a place at their preferred school, a fall of ten per cent on last year’s admissions figures.

In Dorset the figures are higher with 88 per cent of 11-year-olds’ parents being offered their first choice and 96 per cent of 13-year-olds’ parents securing their preferred school.

In Hampshire, 92 per cent of pupils have been allocated a place at their first-choice school.

Many now face a lengthy appeals process in a bid to challenge decisions taken by their local authority.

Competition for places at many schools across Dorset was particularly fierce this year due to fewer parents sending their children to private schools in the recession.

And news that so many have been turned down by their favourite school is certain to fuel demands for an overhaul of the admissions system.

Margaret Morrissey, of the Dorset-based Parents Outloud campaign group, said: “You can’t over-estimate the stress parents go through waiting for a school place.”

Every year hundreds of Dorset families move house to get into a school catchment area.

Grammar schools were also heavily over-subscribed. Bournemouth School for Girls had 469 applicants this year, 74 more than last year. It has just 162 places to offer.

At Twynham in Christchurch, where 240 places are available, 318 children put it down as their first choice and 635 in their top three.

Felicity Draper, access manager for Bournemouth council, said 70 per cent of applicants were offered their first choice school and 96 per cent a place at one of their three preferred schools.

She added: “Parents should not panic – offers of school places will continue to be made right up until September.”

In Poole 91 per cent of pupils were offered a place at one of their three preferred schools.

Vicky Wales, the borough of Poole’s head of children’s and young people’s integrated services, said: “The difference in the data may well reflect parental knowledge of the admissions system because applying for a grammar school no longer jeopardises an application to another school.”

Schools Secretary Ed Balls has acknowledged it is “never going to feel fully fair to parents if they can’t get their child into their first choice school.”

And he added: “Our ambition is that every parent has a good local school to send their children to. Until every school is a good school and there isn’t a concentration of over-subscription in some, then there is going to be disappointment, so there is more to do.”