Goal Programming and Allocating Children to Secondary Schools in Reading

Abstract

The secondary allocation scheme proposed for Reading by Berkshire County Council (B.C.C.) in 1978 has been investigated under the Race Relations Act. After reviewing previous programming studies of devising school catchment areas, this paper uses the technique of goal programming to analyze the problem of proposing catchment areas for the secondary schools in Greater Reading. Six goals are identified: distance, difficulty of journey, racial balance, reading-age retarded balance, sex balance and capacity utilization. The problem is solved for 10 alternative sets of goal weights, and it is shown that most of these dominate the B.C.C. solution.