'Catchment zones'.

'Catchment zoning' has officially failed!
(Oh. You had never known that 'catchment zoning' existed in the first place?)
Well. It has been a system that has been trialled to ensure that children from poorer homes get more places in better schools.
This manipulation was doomed to fail - and it has.
It is virtually impossible to prevent wealthier parents moving into the catchment areas of the better state schools - and when they do live there - how can you possibly ship their kids out to a sink school?

Well then. Let us consider and see if there would have been a better system.

Revolutionary solution:

How about letting the children who would benefit most be chosen for the better schools - on merit rather than by postcode or parents' ability to move house?

Sounds fairer to me. Just one small problem of course, our leftwing friends who helped bring in such a meritocracy in the 1940s were soon champing at the bit to destroy the good thing that they had created.

They were called Grammar Schools!