Parents have lost their fight to get "unfair" school admissions criteria changed for next year.

Brighton and Hove City Council's children, families and schools committee last night voted nine-to-one to keep the current system for selecting pupils for over-subscribed secondary schools in the city for September 2007.

Parents in south-east Hove and eastern parts of Brighton had hoped the committee would reconsider its decision for no change, which it originally made in January.

The committee was forced to look again at the decision after it was called in by councillors from east Brighton and referred back to the committee by the Schools Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

The majority of councillors agreed that opting for anything other than the current system - based on a distance-only measure from pupils' houses - could leave the council open to a legal challenge.

Parents' group CAUSE4EB, which has been campaigning for change since last spring, wanted the committee to select a nodal system to compensate for the uneven distribution of schools around the city.

A working party, set up by the city council, suggested selecting pupils for Dorothy Stringer School based on how close they lived to The Level and half of applications to Blatchington Mill in Hove depending on how close they lived to the Sussex County Cricket Ground.

Councillors rejected the proposal in light of a public consultation which revealed 65 per cent of parents were against change.

Other options included selecting 20 per cent of a school's intake from outside its geographical area but many councillors worried there was not enough time to work out how the 20 per cent would be selected in time to meet deadlines for implementation in 2007.

Chairwoman Pat Hawkes said: "This is a very difficult issue but the most important thing is that the working group and parents' stakeholder group will be reconvened.

"We must look at all the options, including the 20 per cent one, and do the best we can for the whole city."

Vicky Johnson, who lives in Hove and has two children at Somerhill Junior School, said parents would not give up the fight for change.

She said: "Everyone has agreed that this system is unfair and discriminatory, so to do nothing is absurd.

"Many of us do not have a local school and we live too far away from even our closest schools to get places."

She said parents intended to write to Education Secretary Ruth Kelly to demand action from central Government and would seek legal advice to see if they could challenge the council's decision.

Mark Bannister from Brighton and Hove Schools' Action Group, which campaigned against change, said: "We're pleased the council confirmed its original decision which was the right one.

"We are looking forward to working with officers and other parents from all over the city to come up with a proper solution."