I would like to whole-heartedly congratulate the team that delivered the secondary schools admissions review. Despite it being such a complex issue and despite having to cope with the new school admissions code the team evidently formulated the perfect admissions process for Brighton and Hove. This has been confirmed by the decision of the children, families and schools committee to retain the new process without the need for any amendment whatsoever (The Argus, March 18).

The team should be congratulated for coming up with a system that so closely matches numbers of children to places in local schools - apart from Falmer High School and Patcham High School which face systematic and chronic undersubscription.

They should be applauded for ensuring there is a comprehensive and diverse mix within each school - apart from Falmer High which has a huge proportion of free school meal children and Dorothy Stringer School which has a extremely low proportion.

They should be given a pat on the back for preventing any crisscrossing of children across the city - apart from Westdene children travelling four miles to Hove Park School, while passing children travelling from Portslade in the other direction to get to Patcham High.

They should especially be praised for putting an end to parents "buying"

a place at a good school - apart from parents moving into the "golden catchment area" of Dorothy Stringer and Varndean.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary it is clear why the committee took the brave decision not to make any changes to the admissions process. They had clearly looked at all the issues mentioned above in detail and quite rightly come to the conclusion that any minor tweaks to the process would result in the whole system imploding.

  • Andrew Saunders, Ladies Mile Road, Patcham

Important information about the new secondary schools admissions policy continued to dribble out at the meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council's children, families and schools committee.

I was pleased to have the opportunity to ask a public question aimed at informing any judgment about progress towards achieving the authority's admirable strategic goals: greater parental choice, wider access to "golden halo" schools (particularly for east Brighton families), broader social mix in secondary schools and a reduction in cross-city commuting.

Following a response by Vanessa Brown, chair of the Conservativedominated committee, the situation seems to be as follows.

A drop in the proportion of families successfully applying for a place at their first-preference school, down from 84 per cent to 78 per cent (ranking Brighton and Hove 100th out of 149 English authorities, according to official Government figures).

Regarding first and second preferences, Brighton and Hove's proportion of 91 per cent merits a mid-table ranking of 69th.

Dorothy Stringer School and and Blatchington Mill School and Sixth Form College remain no-go areas for families trapped in the two singleschool catchment areas in the east of the city.

Coun Brown revealed only six children from the whole of the Falmer High and Longhill High catchment areas successfully applied. Indeed, only 26 children from east Brighton successfully applied to any of the four schools in the exclusion zones blocking out-ofarea access to Dorothy Stringer, Varndean, Blatchington Mill and Hove Park.

At the extremes, the new arrangements narrowed rather than broadened the social mix in different schools. Coun Brown disclosed a child going to Falmer High in September 2008 is five times more likely to be eligible for free school meals than one going to Dorothy Stringer High School. To put it another way, Falmer High's intake will comprise 26.1 per cent of all Brighton and Hove children with free school meals, compared with five per cent for Dorothy Stringer.

The proportions for 2007 were 21.3 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively.

Catchment areas remain the problem.

More parents able to benefit from random allocation of places at oversubscribed schools promises a solution.

  • Greg Hadfield, Surrenden Road, Brighton