Mill Hill County High School in north London has been told that the amount of pupils it selects on academic ability and aptitude in music, dance and technology should be cut from 45% to just 10%.

And the Sir Christopher Hatton School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, has been ordered to reduce its selection from 15% to 10% of its pupil intake.

The rulings from the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, set up by the government to rule on local disputes about school admissions, follow complaints about the two schools' admissions policies.

Local objections

However, objections to partial selection at a third school, Erith School in Bexley education authority, were dismissed.

Northamptonshire County Council and two other schools had objected to the admission arrangements at the Sir Christopher Hatton School.

And in the case of Mill Hill County School, local parents and Barnet education authority had complained that partial selection limited the opportunities for local children to attend the school, and distorted the intake at other local schools.

School governors said the admission arrangements were necessary to maintain a "comprehensive intake" at the school, and argued that turning the school into a comprehensive would "merely move selection to one on economic grounds because people would move into the area to gain admission to the school".

But the adjudicator said local pupils, who could otherwise expect to be admitted, were being denied admission and were having to travel "unreasonable distances" to other schools.

The objections about admission arrangements at Erith School had come from Bexley LEA's neighbour, Bromley education authority.

Chief Adjudicator Sir Peter Newsam said the decisions about the three schools "illustrate the wide variety of local circumstances which adjudicators must and do take into account".

Previous rulings

The rulings follow five last month, in which the adjudicators told two grant-maintained secondary schools in the Croydon education authority, south London, that they could not introduce partial selection, and curbed the selection procedures of three schools in Wandsworth, south-west London.

The whole issue of selective education is currently a topic of controversial debate, as parents campaigning against it are making the first moves towards abolishing grammar schools in England.

Conservative leader William Hague said this week that he wanted to see selective schools in every town, where parents wanted them.