Letter to the Argus: 22 Dec 05
Left unstated in letters from Queen's Park parents in favour of the Council's Secondary School Admissions Proposals is an apparent reluctance to accept places at Falmer school.

Adding up the figures to be found in the current Schools Admissions Handbook on school places and first preferences for 2005 entry, reveals (a) at Falmer, 117 more places than first preferences, (b) at the six other non-denominational secondary schools overall, 74 fewer places than first preferences. So the City has 43 more places than it needs, but not where parents would like them to be.

It follows that (on 2005 figures) 74 children, mostly living rather distant from Falmer school, will get offered a place there instead of at their first choice or, quite possibly, their second or third choice school. The question is which 74 children these will be. Hidden behind the rhetoric of choice, or lack of it, is a failure by many correspondents to openly recognise this simple arithmetic. The proposed changes will simply ensure that it will be other parents' children, not their own, who will travel out to Falmer. Can anyone explain why it is better that these 74 should come from among those who are mostly now able to walk to school, rather than those who must make a substantial journey in any case?
Marisol Smith

Letter to the Argus: 20 Dec 05
Jane Allen (letters Dec 14th) thinks that it is 'not much to ask' that parents like her in Queen's Park should be able to get their kids into oversubscribed Stringer, Varndean or Longhill. Very reasonable, one may think. But she does not mention the option she presumably rejects - a place at Falmer.

Yet the Council proposals that Ms Allen favours would merely transfer her predicament to parents living near Preston Village. With Stringer unavailable, and competition for places at other local schools intensified, parents there would find themselves excluded not only from Stringer, but from Varndean, Patcham and Blatchington Mill as well. The result would be a straight swap of Stringer places for Falmer places - between parents in Queen's Park and Preston Village.

This is a bad idea, not because one arrangement is any fairer than the other, nor yet because it is better for one child rather than another to suffer a 4 km. trek to Falmer.

The one difference is that a Stringer place would be taken from a child within walking distance of the school and given to one for whom a long cross-town journey, probably by car, would be required. Nobody can regard this as an improvement. Once the Council proposals have been dropped, as they should be, it is to be hoped that fresh thinking will be brought to bear on the real problems highlighted by Ms Allen.
Robert Eastwood

Letter to the Argus: 14 Dec 05
I felt compelled to respond to the numerous letters written by a small clique of people all from the CauseEB campaign to change secondary school admissions in the city. Their campaign is to have “virtual” nodes of measurement adopted for Blatchington Mill and Dorothy Stringer schools. This would mean children from Queens Park and Hanover having exclusive access to these schools.

They fail to, or do not want to, understand the real facts of this issue and they portray parents in many different parts of Brighton (Preston Park, Stanford, Fiveways, Withdean, Westdene, West Hove, Hangleton, and South Portslade) as the “privileged few”.

Recent letters published in the Argus from a small number of people, namely Mick Landmann, Diane Kirkland (Mr Landmann’s partner) and Paul Grivell, all members of CauseEB claim, their cause is supported by “thousands of parents, Councillors etc”. They say the issue is solely about fairness and equality of choice.

The facts ! The current system allocates 95% of children to their 1st choice of secondary school. Given that there are approximately 2,500 places each year in the 8 Council controlled secondary schools , this means that some 125 children in the whole city are not receiving their 1st choice. This means that most children in East Brighton ARE receiving their 1st choice school, unless Cause4EB are saying that there are only 125 secondary school children in East Brighton. Indeed some children from “East Brighton” are already enrolled at Dorothy Stringer.

This shows how CauseEB are seeking exclusive access to two good schools for a small number of dissatisfied parents in Hanover and Queens Park (which I’m sure just by coincidence is where some rather senior Councillors live).  If the Cause4EB campaign really was about East Brighton then maybe one of their number would explain why the proposals they support do not in any way benefit the children of WhiteHawk, the main disadvantaged group in East Brighton? Again this demonstrates how “East Brighton” is being used as a front by people who have much to gain for what can only be described as the “true privileged few”. It is after all Queen’s Park School which is currently the best primary school in Brighton.

Paul Grivell (“We don’t want sympathy” - 9th Dec) suggests that children who live close to Stringer, and would realistically expect to get into Stringer, could easily go to another school such as Varndean. This totally misrepresents the facts as both schools are oversubscribed. Bussing in more children from Queens Park, some of which currently attend Longhill and Falmer could ONLY result in other children that would have attended Stringer or Varndean, being bussed out to other schools themselves.

Mr Grivell’s claim that the proposals just redistribute choice is false using simple arithmetic. If there are no extra places available (and there are not) then all that can be achieved is moving the 125 dissatisfied parents from one part of the city to another. 

Mr Grivell notes that there is a Parents’ Stakeholders Group with parents from “right across the city”.  Mr Grivell doesn’t note that he is the Hanover representative and Mr Landmann is the Queens park representative, and both members of Cause4EB.  In the City Council’s own Terms of Reference the “members will be drawn from parents who presented their views to the Working Group”. Parents in poorly affected areas didn’t know about the proposals until very recently and so not surprisingly membership of this group is comprised of parents such as Mr Grivell and Mr Landmann, who can hardly be considered representative.

The Argus in its editorial on Sat, 10th December commended the children at Westdene School for questioning the Council’s admissions proposals. It noted that politicians should be wary of messing with children’s education. This is the bottom line. Why risk changing a system that delivers 95% success especially when the Government White paper threatens more upheaval at the very time these proposals would come into effect?
Mark Bannister, parent, Westdene

Loder traffic problems
At the meeting at Stringer I invited all on stage to witness the current traffic chaos in Loder & Balfour Road with buses and cars attempting to drop off and deliver children to their local school, imagine this scene three fold, if the current proposals go ahead.

What the photos do not show is the single decker coming out of stringer and blocking the double decker from entering stringer, they also do not show the double decker attempting to reverse back down loder but is blocked by the car behind... perhaps an EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] is a priority!
Debbie MacDonald, parent, Balfour

Shrinking catchments
We have two daughters, one at Balfour Infants and one at Balfour Juniors. We live in Cornwall Gardens which is about 700m away from Dorothy Stringer (via Stringer Way) and about 1km from Varndean. My understanding is that we are not within the Varndean catchment area. With Dorothy Stringer excluded to local families, the Varndean catchment area can only contract. We would thus face the prospect of driving them to Patcham or to Falmer. For two years our youngest daughter would have to be driven back to Balfour from the Patcham or Falmer drop off, thus adding to the congestion in Balfour and Loder Road.
Paul & Joanna Fellingham, parents, Balfour

Pupils want to walk to school
I am in Year 5 at Westdene, with a younger brother in Year 2 and a younger sister in the school nursery. I have already been to visit Dorothy Stringer and Blatchington Mill, as I thought one of these would be the schools that I go to. I asked [Mr Hawker] why they closed the school (Comart) and he said that parents did not want to send their children there, as even though he thought it was giving children a good education, the parents did not. I also said I wanted to be able to go to Dorothy Stringer or Blatchington Mill and friends had brothers and sisters at these schools. Mr Hawker said he was sure 1 or 2 children had asked to go to Patcham this year and didn't I have friends there? I said no, because I haven't.

Gil Sweetenham came to our school council meeting. He bought big maps with him with circles on to explain the proposed changes. I asked why could they not put more resources and good teachers into the closed school and reopen it. Gil said they had already tried that and it had not worked.

Another school councillor said he lived close to Dorothy Stringer and should be able to walk to school, he walks every day to Westdene school and lives closer to Dorothy Stringer. A year 6 councillor said her Mum worked at Westdene School and she had a brother at Dorothy Stringer and if she could not go there it would make it very difficult for her Mum. He said he understood all these problems and would take it back to the working group.

I received a letter from Gil Sweetenham thanking the student council for their contributions to the consultation Secondary Admissions process. He  said that nothing will be finally decided until the end of March, but that he will add our views to the information the working group will consider.  He said his job was to ensure that Brighton and Hove has the fairest system for the largest number of people.
Grace Swann, age 9, Westdene Primary School

Environmental concerns
I was the one that raised the Environmental issue at the meeting at Stringer.
 
I believe that they are obliged to undertake an Environmental Impact assessment in connection with these proposals, to not even have consulted the local bus company is absurd, is there anyone with access to Local Council codes of conduct, rules and procedures or the like that I can research?

Does not the office of the deputy prime minister have an interest if proposals potentially have a significantly detrimental impact on the environment?
Paul James, parent, Dorothy Stringer