HOWEVER gratifying OFSTED's report on the internal working of York's local education authority may appear, it cannot disguise the worrying fact that over the four years of the local education authority's existence, six of the city's 12 comprehensive schools produced GCSE results (grade A-C in five or more subjects) well below the national average of 47 per cent, itself a pathetically low figure.

While GCSE results alone, even with a four-year consistency factor, do not reveal everything about a school, they tell us a lot about the quality of teaching, the school ethic, motivation, leadership and management.

It is regrettable enough for one York school to achieve only 16 per cent but when half of all the city's schools under-perform alarm bells should be ringing with parents if not with the LEA.

What then is the point of having a well- oiled LEA bureaucracy generating endless 'new initiatives', partnerships, plans and performance indicators, taxing the patience of teachers to exasperation, if they cannot produce the one educational performance that really matters and which parents expect of them?

LEA officials never tire of proclaiming that all York's schools are good. If that is the case then some are clearly a lot better than others and no amount of LEA smoke and mirrors will persuade parents otherwise. If York LEA is to justify its expensive existence it should urgently review its priorities. The publication of the next annual GCSE performance tables will tell us if they have.

Ken Beavan,

Albemarle Road, York.