SIR - I would like to respond to Councillor Andy Roberts and to Coun Liz Eyre, who have both written letters about Elgar Technology College.

To set the record straight, Coun John Buckley and I both recognise that the majority of pupils at Elgar Technology College are well behaved, well motivated and want to work hard and do well at school.

However, as the recent Ofsted inspection pointed out, some pupils at this school are badly behaved and disruptive and prevent other pupils learning.

This was one of the reasons why the school was given a notice to improve and then recently put on special measures.

As highlighted in my recent Scrutiny report on managing pupil exclusions in Worcestershire, if the number of pupils a school is allowed to accommodate is consistently higher than the number it actually has, so that there are always surplus places in the school, that school may become an obvious choice for officers of the council to place pupils who have been excluded from other schools.

That, coupled with some pupils in the school's natural community going to out-of-area schools, can create a school which, through no fault of its own, has a larger than average percentage population of challenging pupils.

Coun Roberts knows perfectly well that this is the situation which has existed at Elgar for some years. So his attack on Coun Buckley through this letters column was completely unjustified.

The truth is, however, that Coun Buckley and I have been warning the officers and Coun Eyre for two years that the council needs to take positive, proactive action to address this problem created by too high pupil admission numbers.

This is only one of the factors which causes Elgar Technology College to be in the situation it finds itself, but it is something which must be faced by the cabinet member when she is putting together a plan to take this school out of special measures.

Coun Jo Hodges, Worcestershire County Council.