Sir.-I am a student at Brighton Hill. I, as well as other students, agree with the protest last Friday regarding vertical tutor groups commencing after the summer holidays.

At the moment, all students are in horizontal tutor groups of approximately 26 to 30 students of the same year. The headmaster, Mr Eyre, wants to split the year groups and have five students from each year to form new tutor groups, e.g. five from Year 7, five from Year 8 and so on.

Last Friday morning, there was an assembly to explain the new changes to the tutor group structure. At break, hundreds of students went to the field and sat down on the bank in protest to these changes.

If Mr Eyre wishes to change the tutor group structure then he should do it gradually - starting with the current Year 7 and the Year 6 coming up.

If he did it this way, it wouldn't cause so many problems and disruptions to Years 8, 9 and 10 who have already formed a bond with their tutor and tutor groups.

-Jasmine Roach, age 14, Basingstoke.

Sir.-As a parent of a child in Brighton Hill Community College, I feel I must comment on the remarks of headteacher David Eyre following the pupils' recent protest over vertical tutor groups.

Mr Eyre gives the impression that he allowed the protest to take place with kindly teacher supervision.

My daughter's experience was somewhat different. She says she was threatened with detention if she joined the protest and it was made clear the image of the school was of paramount importance.

The claim that this change is to give the pupils a "greater sense of community" is bewildering.

To imply that this is as a result of single parent families is bizarre. Normally, in single parent families it is a parent that is absent, not older or younger siblings.

Vertical tutoring is a convenient way to bunch children of all ages together based on ability. My money is on all the various ages of cream pupils ending up in the same vertical groups while the more unruly element will be lumped together.

What this will do for the education of average pupils who get stuck in groups filled with bullies of all ages can scarcely be imagined. There is also the issue of sexual maturity.

Historically the school has suffered from a strange "let's make radical changes for the sake of it" mentality.

Perhaps on this occasion, rather than dismiss and ignore parents and pupils, how about doing something really radical and listening to them for a change?

-Richard Johnson, Brighton Hill, Basingstoke.