In your report on the borough council's decision not to use Warwick School in Redhill as polling station for elections (Life October 23) councillor John Jones (Cons, Redhill East) said: "This is a school that has come from nowhere to being one of the leading schools in the borough."

I am sure that he now regrets this off-the-cuff remark. For, of course, the school has gone from strength to strength under the leadership of headteacher Diana Perry, in the past nine years. But the present school certainly did not "come from nowhere".

As a governor of the Warwick School for 25 years, including two spells as chairman, I saw at close range the good education that the school provided for its growing number of pupils in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The then headteachers and their staff (some of whom are still at the Warwick School) did much toward setting the school on the path toward its present achievements. Those teachers deserve great credit for coping so well in a period when money was scarce with few direct government grants, low salaries and very little scope for investment in new buildings and repairs to old buildings.

Peter Spiro, Lonesome Lane, Reigate