Sir – Terry Stock (Letters, February 16) advertises the New Oxford School Trust proposal to set up a non-selective state secondary school at the Harwell Campus.

He and the project website mention a variety of possible links with businesses in the area, but not the fact that the site is remote from the main population centres.

Virtually all students would be entitled to free school transport being outside a three-mile walking distance which would be a permanent burden on council finances.

When school buses do not meet the needs of the children, parents will resort to cars adding to congestion and emissions. The distance from the main towns and the state of the roads is likely to deter cycling which is a convenient, popular and healthy way for children to access the existing schools.

There seems to be no understanding of the relationship between schools and the community. We have administrations at central and local levels expressing an interest in community building and cohesion to whom it should be obvious that transporting children into school from substantial distances creates travel patterns which makes it difficult to maintain friendships and other networks without high, and possibly unsustainable, levels of mobility.

At a time when we are faced with the challenge of developing sustainable travel systems it would be very difficult to understand county council support for a project which has such economic, social and environmental drawbacks — whatever the claimed educational aspirations and possible benefits.

Daniel Scharf, Abingdon