It's a shame the feature on the £27 million PFI project to provide state-of-the-art facilities in four of our secondary schools (The Argus, June 4) failed entirely to mention the key role played by the LEA.

It is yet another example of how the LEA will always be blamed when things go wrong but rarely given credit when things succeed.

We have been criticised over our handling of the merger of Goldstone Junior and Knoll Infants schools and over the way we are required by law to operate our school admissions procedures.

We did not mishandle the Goldstone merger process. Our mistake - if it was one - was in not reversing the decision we had made to merge the schools when we became aware of the funding gap until we had secured a government grant to fill it.

We went ahead because we did not want to leave the schools in limbo and, at the time, there was no reason to suspect our bid for funding would be unsuccessful.

On the school admissions issue, which this year has particularly affected several families living close to Queen's Park school, our hands are effectively tied by government regulations and this has led to a situation that is far from satisfactory.

We welcome the call for a scrutiny of our admissions policies and will be listening carefully to its recommendations. If there are ways of making the system work better for more families and children, we would be keen to develop them.

Not worth it?

Well, D A Coles (Letters, June 15), let me name an industry affected by the use of foreign (immigrant) labour. In this industry, wages have frequently failed to keep pace with inflation, hours are anti-social and working conditions can be hazardous. In fact, in recent years, it has reached a state of affairs where it is almost impossible to recruit staff locally because of this.

I refer to the NHS. Recruitment for nursing posts has become so poor it has become necessary to hire large numbers of qualified nurses from the Philippines. Without this immigrant labour, the NHS would be in even worse state than now. The churlish blanket resentment of immigrants displayed in your letter is enough to make me wonder if the British public are worthy of the nursing services of my wife (an immigrant) and the public services of myself (British).

-G E Stroud, Mayo Road, Brighton