How central questions were edited out of leaflet (03.02.05)

The removal from a consultation leaflet of questions about whether parents want a move to two-tier education was defended by a council chief yesterday.

A cross-party project board set up to manage Northumberland County Council's Putting the Learner First strategy agreed last December that leaflets sent to homes should ask parents what education system they wanted. But questions on whether they preferred the current three-tier system or a move to two tiers that would see 44 middle schools close were later removed on the advice of officers.

Members of the council's ruling Labour group agreed to delete the questions from the leaflets sent to parents and instead ask them in a phone poll of randomly selected residents. Conservative and Liberal Democrat group leaders Michael Jeans and Scott Weightman objected to the changes in the leaflet, but it was sent to nearly 150,000 homes.

Quizzed about the deletion at a full council meeting yesterday, leader Michael Davey said: "A sub-group of the project board, which consisted of cross-party representation and senior officers, met on December 9 to agree the consultation document. All representatives present agreed with the content at that time. How-ever, subsequently it was decided to remove a question about people's preferred system of education in Northumberland.

"This decision was made since chief officers advised me that it would be more appropriate to use an independent telephone survey to ask this question, as this will provide a 95pc confidence level of the views of the general public in Northumberland."