GOVERNORS at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe are going head to head with Buckinghamshire Education Authority in a second battle about school admissions.

On Wednesday, the schools adjudicator Elizabeth Parsons will visit the school to hear both sides of the case.

Grammar school governors want a bigger school catchment area. And they say when more boys pass the 11-plus than there are places, the places should go to the boys with the highest marks.

The RGS is a foundation school and can set its own admission arrangements.

The LEA has introduced a new policy for September, which says in cases of oversubscription, places should go to children who live closest to the school not those with the highest marks .

The argument between the schools and the LEA is a virtual re-run of last year's confrontation, when the adjudicator Dr Alan Billings backed the LEA.

Now the RGS is having a second go in the light of what school head Tim Dingle says has been a "cock up" over admissions for September.

He said when school places were allocated for September ten extra boys got in on appeal, though the school could not take any more.

Classes were designed for 28, but were already taking 32 and the extra ten would put class numbers up to 34, which was unacceptable, he said.

Instead there would have to be another class, which would cost £50,000 more than the £24,000 that would follow the extra pupils.

Mr Dingle said the school had said last year the new system would not work and that the LEA had not got its figures right.

The governors had decided to go back to the previous system, based on 11-plus marks, from September 2006.

He said the RGS was being backed by Gerrards Cross Primary School and by people in Beaconsfield who could not get into RGS because they lived too far away. The present system discriminated against those who lived furthest away, he said.

But Mr Dingle said people should not panic. "We will give them a first class education next year," he said.

"We are totally committed to it, but we have been left high and dry by the appeals panel because we have no support."

Paul Holmes, the county council's manager for school organisation, said the RGS had consulted on changing its catchment area back in January. The LEA had said that if it was enlarged it would be more difficult for children to get in. "We said please stick to the existing slightly smaller catchment area," he said.

But the LEA had not been consulted about the oversubscription criteria because it only had a letter about it in mid April.

"No other grammar school in the county will be doing this or wants to do it.

"It is a shame that the Royal Grammar School wants it," he said.