ONE of the great selling points when comprehensive education was being planned was the fact that children would be able to get secondary education at a school in their locality.

It would also mean that brighter pupils would not have to make bus trips to grammar schools miles away.

But not if Blackburn with Darwen Council happens to be the education authority.

It has told parents of children in the Pleckgate area that they must send their children to schools miles away when there is a perfectly good one on the doorstep.

Not surprisingly the parents are furious.

There is something radically wrong with an allocation system that forces pupils to travel several miles across town - in one case to Darwen - when there is a school at the end of the road.

Switching from primary to secondary school can be a traumatic experience for children. But here we have a situation where some of them will find themselves in a "big" school with no friends.

To us this smacks of social engineering, a determination to fill places behind desks at all costs and kick the preferences of parents into touch.

One might even ask if children are being shunted across town to improve the pupil profile of some schools.

The parents must appeal in the strongest possible terms against this decision and Blackburn with Darwen Council must justify its move which is causing so much distress.

In some cases the schools allocated have not even been on the parents' preferred list.

So much for parental choice.

In Pleckgate that has gone out of the window and parents are in effect being told by Blackburn with Darwen Council: "We know best."

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