THE Government's annual performance tables for secondary schools have just been published.

How can York's education authority continue to go on record claiming that "all York's (comprehensive) schools are good" when, year after year the GCSE tables show that five of the city council's 11 comprehensives achieve well below the national average, itself only a modest 50 per cent?

The fact that the top schools of the LEA regularly achieve around 70 per cent or better, highlights the enormous disparity with those at the bottom in the lowly 20 to 30 per cent category and not improving.

Isn't it now time for Coun Looker (LEA chairman) to stop trying to fool York's parents and admit that almost half of the city's schools are well below average and some close to the Government's definition of "special measures"?

She ought to be focusing, not on nauseating spin but on the urgent action necessary to rectify the position.

The council's ideological obsession with what Downing Street itself calls the "bog standard" comprehensive system shows that it is failing many of York's parents and pupils. It is not the fault of teachers who struggle to cope with the oppressive bureaucracy imposed on them.

Children are not "bog standard".

They have a variety of abilities for which the education system ought to be designed.

Ken Beavan,

Albemarle Road, York.

Updated: 09:28 Saturday, November 24, 2001