EDUCATION chiefs at County Hall, Aylesbury, are preparing reports on how the allocation of secondary school places worked this year.

But with a new school admissions system coming into force, new catchment areas, a different 11-plus system and a new Government requirement that all children in the country should be offered a secondary school place on the same day, there are still lots of unanswered questions.

Officers, for instance, are still trying to find out why more children passed the 11- plus, why boys did better than girls and why children in the south did better than those in the north of the county.

Altogether 104 more children passed than last year, 160 more boys, but 56 fewer girls. And the majority of the extra passes were children from south Buckinghamshire.

Not all children attending Buckinghamshire secondary schools live in the county.

Five buses a day bring Milton Keynes children to take up spare spaces at grammar schools in Buckingham and Aylesbury. Another 69 children from Slough go to Burnham Grammar School and 29 from Berkshire attend Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow. The catchment areas of these two schools extends into Slough and Berkshire so children who pass the 11-plus are entitled to places. There are also 89 children from outside the county attending Buckinghamshire upper schools.