While acknowledging and appreciating Vicky Cooper's comments (Letters, March 13) that she and others in the Fiveways area are now more aware of the secondary school admission difficulties other parts of the city face, I must take issue with her over her remarks regarding Varndean School.

Even if the nodal system had been initiated (and who knows, it still might be), I fail to see how people living in the Fiveways area would not have been able to get places at Varndean.

If you live close to the school, as Fiveways residents do, then on a home to school distance policy they would have received a place there, provided it was put as their first preference.

Varndean takes in 240 students each year. Is Vicky Cooper seriously suggesting there are more than 240 primary school pupils in each year group living in the immediate Fiveways area?

Working on the basis that each primary school class has a maximum of 30 pupils, Varndean's yearly intake is the equivalent of eight primary school classes.

I believe Balfour Junior School has three classes per cohort.

That's the equivalent of 90 pupils. There is thus surely more than enough room at Varndean. I don't therefore understand why Ms Cooper states that those living near to both Stringer and Varndean "would not have got in to either school" and that they "would have to drive their children through increased school traffic heading towards Dorothy Stringer from around the city, to schools miles away".

Parents living in Fiveways and its surrounding area could quite easily have got places at Varndean. Indeed, if the bi-nodal suggestion for Stringer had come into operation, they could have had access to both schools.

One other piece of information Fiveways residents might like to know about is the existence of school buses.

These have been in operation for years now. Indeed the one which goes to the Varndean/Stringer campus picks up and sets down just around the corner from where I live.

So I am at a loss as to how our children being able to access their nearest schools, whether Varndean or Stringer, "would have added traffic chaos in an area where many children are currently lucky enough to walk to school".

I am sure all of us would love our children to be able to walk to their nearest school but it just so happens the secondary schools in Brighton and Hove aren't evenly geographically spread.

Yet another "misunderstanding", I feel, is this "green" argument about the nodal system increasing traffic.

It is the status quo which does that.

-Lynne Nicholls, Brighton