This is the time of year when parents and children anxiously await the morning postal delivery.

No, I am not talking about Valentine's Day and the eager anticipation of pink, scented envelopes.

The letters I am thinking of are in those official, buff envelopes much loved by local education authorities.

They contain those life-changing verdicts allocating secondary school places.

I received one last week. It informed me that my 11-year-old daughter is 88th on the waiting list for the school of her choice.

It is a non-selective school, the nearest local education authority school to our home, but, like many others we must wait - and hope - for the waiting list to diminish.

This experience is increasingly common.

Parental choice

We may be in the age of parental choice but the reality is that there is now more frustration, disappointment and - more easily measurable - a higher proportion of appeals over school choices than in the past.

The reasons for this are many: school league tables have heightened parental anxiety, greater openness has encouraged parents to scrutinise schools more closely, and political rhetoric has encouraged parents to believe they can demand the school of their choice.

In reality, of course, parents only have a right to state a preference.

There is another reason for the confusion and anxiety felt by many parents at this time of the year.

In the past, when choosing a secondary school, it was usual to send off one form to the education authority, putting schools in your order of preference.

Now, with so many schools opted-out of local authority control, parents in many areas have to apply to several individual schools at once.

This is certainly the case where I live.

Confusion

It is a confusing picture: parents send in one form for the local authority schools, another to the neighbouring authority, several more to those schools which handle their own admissions and - in some cases - yet more forms to independent schools.

With parents making multiple applications for their children, most schools are, initially at least, heavily oversubscribed.

Even after the first wave of offers go out, many parents feel they must hold onto offers they do not really want until such time as they get a firm offer from their preferred school.

If it is hard on parents, it is also tough for children.

On the day the offers came out, my daughter and her friends were on the telephone to each other to find out which schools had accepted them.

Forming friendships

Already friendships are shifting as children start to combine with those they think will be moving on to the same secondary school.

It is tough when you may not know for many weeks, even months, which school you will be going to.

Some might argue that this is the inevitable result of creating a market in school choice.

They would say this system may have its flaws but it is preferable to the old system where children were simply allocated to a school irrespective of their parents', or their own, views.

But is it not possible to have a system where there is both choice and a greater degree of certainty?

One answer would be to give popular schools greater flexibility to expand.

Of course, there will always be physical limits to schools' capacity but I have experienced more flexible systems than our own.

American method

Last year I spent four months in the United States and had to find schools for my two daughters for a term.

Once I had acquired an address in Ann Arbor - a university town in Michigan - I contacted the local schools.

Would they have space for my children?

I was taken aback by their answer: Yes, they would be very welcome.

"Just turn up on the first day of term," I was told.

"What happens," I asked, "if too many children turn up on the first day of the new school year?"

The answer was wonderfully pragmatic: "Then we'll just get in an extra teacher."

And that was exactly what happened. On the first day of the new school year, an extra dozen or more students turned up for the starting grade (year group), so the school contacted the local school district and an extra teacher was despatched.

This, of course, could only happen in an area where the majority of schools are administered by the local authority which is able to be flexible with its teaching force.

The growth of self-governing schools, and their greater independence from local authorities, has brought undoubted benefits.

But - on school admissions at least - it has also brought some problems.