SIR, My education started at Glendower Street School, moving on to Jones's Endowed, then to Priory Street School and from there to Monmouth School. All the original buildings, dating back nearly a thousand years, are still standing. Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) appears to be incapable of building anything to last more than a few decades. A fine example is the health clinic which is now derelict. On this site, the council has permitted the destruction of a large section of the town wall and an ancient ice-house built into it. Now they are going to pull down Monmouth Comprehensive School and the town swimming pool so they can build a four-wall, two-balcony monstrosity of a school costing £36,000,000 of our money. This will probably have a working life of 30 years if we are lucky. It will depreciate at about a million pound a year. We know that the standard of the NHS and education in Wales is far inferior to the rest of the UK. Monmouth, however, has three excellent secondary schools. In my opinion, this experiment in education will drag our comprehensive back to the level of the rest of Wales. In the past, the ideal was to aim for smaller classroom pupil numbers. The article and plans shown in the Beacon suggest that the school will be a large open space and balconies such as those seen when watching BBC newsreaders, with the weatherman on a balcony. A large marquee erected over a playground would be just as good. Children are individuals and shouldn't be herded together. They have different speeds of maturing, learning and different standards of behaviour and there are always one or two bad apples per hundred. This isn't 21st century schools, it is a return to the 17th century. A good architect would use £10 million and extend the present school. £26 million could be used to reduce council tax. In 1970, Monmouth people started to raise funds for a public swimming pool. MCC stepped in and paid half the cost as long as the pool was built in the school grounds. This pool is being demolished. They promise to build a new pool but I fear this will be it for the school. This experiment by MCC in education must be stopped because if it goes ahead and doesn't work, Monmouth will be stuck with it for years with nowhere else for our children to go for an orthodox education. Name and address supplied