No matter how many times it is spelled out, some parents in privileged zones of the city continue to wilfully misrepresent the issues surrounding the current school admissions system.

Alarmingly, they add a new spin to their campaign to keep an unfair system by trying to represent our campaign group (cause4bh) as screaming militants.

Apparently, we're not prepared to listen to argument while demanding the best for our kids at the expense of everyone else. This is nonsense.

Let's state the facts:

Fact 1: The current system is unfair. Parents, CFS, MPs and the director of education all agree the current walking-distance criterion unfairly discriminates against a significant number of parents and children who have no nearby schools. This year, most parents in the suburbs of the city were granted their first preference of secondary school. For inner city areas, this falls to something approaching 40 per cent. The working group was set up to find a better solution to this problem.

Fact 2: Cause4bh has never advocated parents in excluded zones should have access to any specific schools, much less those deemed "the best" by some.

We have consistently argued that what is needed is a fairer system on a city-wide basis to enable more children to attend their nearest schools.

Stringer and Blatchington were identified as suitable for the nodal system by the working group, not by us, and it made that choice for good reasons to do with the schools' proximity to excluded zones.

As a campaign group, we don't mind which of our nearest schools we send our children to as long as we have some realistic chance of getting them in to just one of them.

Throughout the consultation process, cause4bh representatives pressed Brighton and Hove City Council to elaborate its proposals in order to more clearly identify the city-wide impact of the nodal system.

We were concerned the proposals might merely shift the problem from one area to another when what we wanted was a fairer system overall.

Fact 3: The working group was of the clear opinion the nodal proposals would lead to a "considerable improvement" overall.

It felt the nodal system would result in more parents than at present obtaining their expressed preferences.

Nowhere in its report does it claim this would simply lead to the problem being shifted from one area of the city to another.

Fact 4: There is no evidence the nodal proposals would result in increased travel for children overall.

With more children attending their "nearest" schools, the opposite is more likely.

Under the current system, children in excluded zones already travel long distances. The problem is compounded when parents move from excluded zones to be near secondary schools for their eldest child but then drive their younger children back across the city for primary schools.

Fact 5: The current unfair system has already been in place for two years with CFS now voting to maintain it for yet another year.

Saying there is no rush will be of little comfort to the hundreds of parents who opened letters from the council last week informing them their children have not gained places at their nearest schools and must instead travel a considerable distance to schools not of their choosing.

-Paul Grivell, cause4BH (Campaign against unfair secondary education 4 Brighton and Hove), Dawson Terrace, Brighton