As a New Labour Party member, I must protest at the new admissions policy put forward by 'Old Labour' City of York councillors. The politics are clear.

ISSUE ONE: City Of York Council wants to stop children going to Tadcaster Grammar School because it wants the £2,000 per child to go into its own coffers. They offer the parents of Copmanthorpe places at the most successful York comprehensive school, namely Fulford (not their closest city comprehensive).

ISSUE TWO: The council has an unpopular school, namely Archbishop's, with a number of surplus places.

Old Labour solution: Dunnington and Elvington parents are, in the main, non-Labour voters. There is no marginal council seat, so let's engage in a bit of social engineering and maybe we can improve the standards at Archbishop's and at the same time create extra space at Fulford.

The political naivety is obvious. No parent is going to send their child to an unpopular school. The surplus places will not be filled and Tadcaster Grammar will continue to receive York children. The national Labour Party view is clear: catchment areas do not work because the socially mobile move. The feeder school system is much fairer.

The sad indictment of this Old Labour decision is that a council should serve all its citizens whether they voted for Labour or not and that decisions concerning education should be reached on educational grounds.

One thing is clear, is that Dunnington and Elvington parents endorse the New Labour policy of supporting successful comprehensives, they have shown that in their support for Fulford. The council should be addressing the management problems of some of its schools rather than delighting in the castigation of successful head teachers.

Trevor Dawton,

Coneycroft,

Dunnington, York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.