When Paul Grivell quoted the report by the Secondary Schools Working Group, he wrote, "the group found that their nodal proposals would lead to a considerable improvement to the current unfair system" (Letters, February 24).

The working group didn't say the current system is unfair in this quote but they did say a nodal system would not deliver certainty about school places and it did acknowledge some areas have a problem.

However, as Mr Grivell rightly points out, a massive 90 per cent of children already obtain their first-preference school under the current system.

There are not many towns and cities in the UK which do not have some sort of advantage regarding schools admissions, dependent on exactly where one lives. That's life.

A pure lottery would be one solution but, while equitable, it would result in a total dog's breakfast for schools, children and parents.

The only system that works consistently well but can never be 100 per cent fair is one that is based on children's proximity to the schools themselves.

If CauseEB had stopped to listen to the real debate, rather than shout and scream, they would appreciate that the working group now understands that their proposals would only have shifted the problem faced by some parents to others in different parts of the city.

The working group presented no statistical or other data whatsoever that would demonstrate any other outcome.

While the working group may have used the big vote against change as one of the reasons to recommend more modelling, they actually do recognise that the only solution is to improve standards in all our schools and that gerrymandering with the admissions system is futile.

-Mark Bannister, Brighton