As a parent who also has a longstanding interest in education for all, it fills me with dismay that Brighton and Hove City Council is putting its trust for sorting out children's futures in a computer system.
Many secondary school places from 2008 are likely to be decided by random allocation if the current proposals go ahead.
There has already been one significant error, with 66 children being missed off the calculations. I wonder if any more have been missed?
What other errors will be made affecting children's lives?
A local authority in London which uses an equal preference, computerbased system to support electronic ballots in the case of oversubscription said: "The computer software barely held together and there were endless problems which meant we missed some vital information."
Another local authority said it was "an expensive and bureaucratic response to the problem of a shortage of secondary schools in this part of London. The system achieved nothing for parents".
This is starting to sound familiar.
By contrast, in Finland, priority is given to ensuring every child has a place at a local school with priority being given to making travel to school as safe and short as possible.
In that a minority of Brighton and Hove children genuinely do not get the opportunity to attend a local community school, these proposals work on the lowest common denominator.
The council's answer is to bring in a system which reduces everyone's chance of attending a local school rather than addressing the needs of those children without.
In many European countries, the opportunity to attend a local community school is seen as a right which should be enjoyed by all, not a luxury to be given and taken away depending on who complains the most.
When will the council realise that to meet the educational needs of this growing city it needs to lobby the Government for funding to build much-needed new schools, ensuring, as it claims in its own documentation, that "schools are fit for purpose and develop extended schools at the heart of communities" (Brighton and Hove 2020 Community Strategy).
Those are fine words but where's the substance?
Keith Turvey
Stanford parent and governor
Tivoli Crescent, Brighton
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