Our education worries

About a year before our son was 11, this was stopped. The only alternative for secondary education in Bexhill at that time would have been the High School, which even then did not have a particularly good reputation. As we did not qualify for St Richards, the only solution was to move.

We decided Claverham at Battle was the best bet, so we upped and moved to Ninfield. Both my son and daughter attended Claverham where they were very happy and left with respectable O-Levels.

Over the past 30 years or so the situation at the High School does not appear to have improved greatly. Throughout that time it was operating on two sites at the Down and Gunters Lane, and it was not unusual to see pupils walking between the two, presumably from one class to another, which appeared to me far from satisfactory.

More recently on television, we were shown the new school in Gunters Lane with classes of 90 and pupils attending from 8am to 5pm, with a half-hour lunch break.

It appeared to be somewhere between chaos and a bear garden, with the teachers maintaining order with a microphone and a loudspeaker. I would certainly have great difficulty in concentrating under such conditions and feel extremely sorry for the pupils.

I was always given to understand that one of the problems in state education was the large class sizes of around 30. In private education I believe classes are rarely more than 20 and quite often around 12 pupils and, of course, they get consistently good results.

If I had children requiring secondary schooling in Bexhill today I would be moving hotfoot to another area again.

Please excuse any errors in my grammar but I left school at 14. I never sat the 11 Plus. An uncle did offer to pay for me to go to the grammar school but I refused, and have a slight regret over this now.

PATRICK WALKER

Duke Street

Bexhill-on-Sea