WHAT on earth has gone wrong with the system for allocating places in East Lancashire's secondary schools? Across the region, parents are up in arms over their children being put down by the education authorities for schools miles away from their homes.

In Blackburn we have already had instances of pupils being expected to travel across town when there is an ideal school near where they live.

Now, in the Ribble Valley, we have cases of children being allocated to schools in other towns far away - as much as three bus journeys distant.

There are even incredible instances of children being required to travel from their homes in Bolton-by-Bowland and Gisburn to a far-away school in Accrington.

These, surely, are lunatic logistics - unfair on the children and ones that make the vaunted notion of parental choice more like Hobson's Choice.

In reply to the Ribble Valley uproar, education officials are blaming higher-than-usual demand for secondary places in the area's schools.

But, have they no measure in advance of the demand for places?

They ought to have when the numbers of children due to leave primary school each year are evident - as is the likelihood of which secondary schools their parents will want them to attend. Do they take no account of population shifts as new housing is provided?

It may be that supply and demand is being affected by the pressure to reduce class sizes.

It may also be that "county" children living on the outskirts of Blackburn and Darwen have fallen down the pecking order for access to its schools now that its education authority is independent of Lancashire's.

It may also be that parental choice inside Blackburn and Darwen is being eroded by meddlesome education officials seeking to adjust the social mix of schools by directing children from middle-class areas to "working-class" schools and vice-versa.

But the whole upshot is a foul-up that denies parents their right of choice and discriminates against youngsters by having them spend unnecessary hours on buses.

It should be sorted out fast - and if neither these bungling education officials nor the appeals system can do this, then this "education, education, education" government must.

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