EVERY year some parents are left upset and bewildered as to why their child has not been able to attend the secondary school of their choice. This year controversy surrounded the admissions policy to Pleckgate School, Blackburn. Some decisions were overturned following appeals to independent panels but these committees look set to change in September and members of the council's Education and Training Committee will discuss the new make-up of appeal panels tonight. Allegations were also made, in the leader columns of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, that council social engineering may have been behind the decisions made by the council which led to some of the pupils who live on Pleckgate's doorstep being offered places at the school. Reporter PAUL SMITH was invited to meet education officers from Blackburn with Darwen to go through the council's admissions files.

MARCH and April are the months when primary children prepare for the big step up to secondary school and get to know where they will be going.

And each year a number of parents are left fuming because they have not been offered the school of their choice.

It happens in every area of the country, no matter what system councils adopt to decide who goes where.

In Blackburn with Darwen the system led to a glut of parents being left disappointed, including some whose children go to Lammack and St James' CE Primary Schools which are near Pleckgate High School.

All these parents first came across the selection procedure when invited to name three schools of preference, in order, on application forms.

The forms were then sent to council officials who put all the information into their computers. This is the stage at which it becomes clear whether some schools are over-subscribed. When a school has more applications than it has places on offer it is then that the council's admissions policy kicks in. First preference is given to those children who already have brothers or sisters at a school.

Second preference is given to children with medical, social or welfare problems.

Youngsters who are under the care of social services or need to attend a school which is near a hospital because of ongoing treatment fall into the second group.

Lastly, and most controversially, distance to the school from where a child lives is then taken into account, but not quite in the way many people think.

The procedure which is followed in this third category is a little confusing and to illustrate how it works perhaps the best method would be to look at the situation the council found itself in with Pleckgate admissions for 1999.

Many parents in the Lammack and surrounding areas who applied for their children to attend Pleckgate could not understand why they were not offered a place, while youngsters from Little Harwood and Whitebirk, much further away, were offered a place. The reason is that children from Lammack have other schools nearby whereas if youngsters from Little Harwood don't attend Pleckgate they literally have to travel to the other side of town.

So, in essence, the selection procedure gives priority to children who would have the furthest and most difficulty in travelling to an alternative school if they were not offered their first choice.

This year the problem cropped up at Pleckgate because, for a number of reasons, it was a popular choice among parents, not least because the assisted places scheme had been abolished and the school had been given a very good Ofsted report.

Next year, with different numbers of children applying for places the problem may arise in a different area of town.

Even after the selection procedure parents can appeal against a decision through an independent appeal committee which is given much greater flexibility to consider applications than the council. But members of the Education and Training Committee will hear tonight how new appeal panels will consist of just three or five members instead of seven and will not include members of the Local Education Authority or the governing body of the school.

The changes will leave the council short of volunteers capable of sitting on panels and it will be recruiting new candidates, particularly targeting Asian representatives.

Council admissions officer Zac Patel said: "There is never going to be a perfect formula with which everybody is happy but we believe this is the best one for us and our circumstances.

Editor of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph Peter Butterfield defended the stance the newspaper took on admissions.

He said: "Any system that causes so much heartache for parents and young children is patently flawed.

"I accept that the system as it stands is operated even-handedly and there was no element of social engineering, as I claimed in an opinion column.

"However something is fundamentally wrong with the current system and it needs sorting out."

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