IT WILL be with a grim sense of djM- vu that parents in the Ribble Valley observe today the re-emergence of the school places row as yet another raft of youngsters in their final year at primary school look set to be denied admission to their "local" secondary school.

This time it is pupils in Whalley and surrounding villages who have drawn the short straw in the scramble for places at popular Ribblesdale High in Clitheroe and are likely to be told they must go to Moorhead High in Accrington instead. Last year it was primary pupils in Clayton-le-Dale and Salesbury who faced this plight.

And, inevitably, the process is set once more to entail the setting up of angry parents' action groups and the lodging of appeals and all the personal worry and frustration that goes with this situation - though there is no way of knowing yet whether, like last year, supposedly full-up Ribblesdale will eventually somehow squeeze in the youngsters originally excluded.

But for all the vexation that goes with this mismatch of supply and demand - one that, basically, is fuelled by the provision of secondary school places in the Ribble Valley having failed to keep demand with population pressures stemming from new and continuing housing development in the area - what must anger parents whose children are the new losers in this lottery is that, despite its predictability, this problem had still not been properly confronted.

For this is not just a question of children being inconvenienced by having to travel to second-choice schools. It is one that unpicks the fabric of communities when local children cannot go to local schools; when they are split up from their friends and when they are made to face increased risks to their safety. In the short term, what needs to be done - and what should have been done already, given that the numbers in primary schools clearly spell out year on year what the demands for secondary places will be and in which schools - is that education chiefs should be providing temporary accommodation to absorb the pressures.

Longer term, they should accept the principle of secondary schools having identified "feeder" primary schools - a system that would accommodate virtually all of the prevailing parental choice - and gear resources to this. Indeed, with Lancashire claiming to have a current and growing excess of primary school places, it could draw from the savings in that sector to help fund the provision of extra resources for the secondary sector.

What is plain is that this problem cannot be allowed to resurrect itself year after year - when it has gone on too long already.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.