THE term 'feeder school' is a technical one which those involved in education use with a precision which, no doubt, members of the general public consider pedantic. It has ceased to have relevance since the last government introduced the concept of parental preference into school admissions procedures.

It is this innovation which undermined the concept of a school based on a local community and the loss of which Mrs Ruth Plimley, of the Pleckgate Parent Teacher Association, deplores (LET, May 20).

Lancashire County Council established the current procedures, based on the guidelines of the last government, for admission to high schools. All political parties on Blackburn with Darwen Council agreed to their adoption by the new authority.

They have been applied this year in exactly the same way as they were applied under the county council by the same officers who applied them last year, having since transferred from the service of the county to that of the new authority.

The concerns that have been expressed this year arise from two other innovations of the last government. The first is the publication of the results of SATS and other external examinations achieved by individual schools. The second is the publication of the OFSTED reports on individual schools. No one questions that, in a democratic society, the public has a right to as much information as possible.

However, test and examination results can be better in one year than in another. Successive OFSTED reports can indicate progress or decline in a school. Understandably, parents use the information available in the relevant year when indicating preferences for schools. The result is a volatility and unpredictability in the numbers of pupils seeking admissions to particular schools from one year to another.

The table, which your paper printed (LET, May 17) indicated that pupils from 10 primary schools provided 91.78 per cent of the pupils admitted to Pleckgate High School in 1998. In 1999, those 10 schools provided 93.3 per cent.

This would seem to indicate a consistency in the way the procedures are being applied. However, the proportions from each of these 10 schools are not the same in 1999 as in 1998. It is the inherent unpredictability of demand which explains this apparent contradiction.

COUNCILLOR JACK PEET, Waterfall Terrace, Belmont, Bolton.

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