Parents have united behind a campaign to oppose planned secondary school admissions changes.

Groups from Coombe Road, Carden, Patcham, Stanford, West Dene, Downs and Balfour junior and primary schools in Brighton and Hove have launched a petition and website against the proposals.

Parents say hundreds of families will be left in an unfair situation if the catchment area and "lottery" selection systems planned by the city council went ahead.

Mother-of-three Sarah-Jane Heinrich, 40, of Coombe Road, Brighton, said: "We will be left with no choice about where our children go."

She said her children would be allocated places at either Patcham or Falmer High, the two schools with the lowest GCSE results in the city.

Mrs Heinrich said many more families could decide to move out of her area of the city, which was already becoming dominated by university students.

The campaign group School4Communities raised two main objections to the plans.

Firstly that parents would have little or no power to select the best school for their child and secondly that youngsters in the three dual catchment areas - Hove Park and Blatchington Mill; Varndean and Dorothy Stringer; and Patcham and Falmer High - could be faced with long journeys to the school furthest from their home.

If the proposals are approved by the council's schools committee on January 29, the "ballot" system will be used to rule which children gain places at the most popular school in their catchment area.

Mother-of-two Tracey-Ann Ross, spokeswoman for Schools4Communities, said the system would cause stress for families as they waited for results and would lead to children criss-crossing the city to travel to school.

She said: "The council is making it impossible. No one cares that children will be sent to so many different schools.

They are pawns to be moved around as the council sees fit."

Schools4Communities said parents from Coldean, Moulsecoomb, Bevendean and Portslade were also starting to join the campaign as they realised they too would be losing the ability to choose a school for their child.

The council proposed the system of catchment areas to ensure every child in the city was able to gain a place at a nearby school.

The current walking-distance scheme has led to areas being created where parents cannot get their children into any of the schools nearest to them.

The council is consulting with school governors to gauge opinions on the proposals. The deadline for responses is January 12. If the scheme is approved in late January it would come into effect in September, 2008.

Details of the council's proposals, including a map of the planned catchment areas, are at www.brighton-hove.gov.uk Information about the Schools4Communities campaign is at www.schools4communities.co.uk.

To see our map of the planned catchment areas, click here

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