Education Minister Tim Smith has dismissed claims of bias in the selection of students for Berkeley Institute in September.

"I can assure parents of students who have been selected to go to Berkeley Institute that they were selected on an entirely exclusive random basis,'' Mr.

Smith told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

He was responding to an anonymous letter sent to this paper, the electronic media, and Shadow Education Minister Jennifer Smith.

In the letter, simply marked June 1998, the writer calls for an investigation into the selection of 90 middle schools students who will enter the first year of Berkeley.

Noting that former Education Minister Jerome Dill in April promised that students entering CedarBridge Academy and Berkeley would be randomly selected by computer, the writer stated: "It is a known fact that names of students were submitted several weeks ago and were in fact selected by the middle school principals according to who they thought should attend each school.'' "The principals mixed some good kids with some bad kids to make it look legitimate,'' the writer claimed. "Berkeley has already met with all the incoming students. All of the students and parents seem to believe that the selection was done as promised.

"Why couldn't all the names of the students be sent abroad to an independent body for correct, random, unbiased computer selection?'' The writer added that some students who will attend Berkeley were already bragging about it, as were their parents.

"This attitude is identical to that which existed during the days of the 11-Plus exam,'' the letter concluded. "Once again the public has been deceived.'' But Mr. Smith vehemently denied this.

He noted that due to overcrowding at CedarBridge, the Education Ministry, in consultation with both Berkeley and CedarBridge, decided that the transfer of 360 students from the middle school level to the senior secondary level should be shared between Berkeley and CedarBridge Ninety of the students, mainly 14 year olds, will go to Berkeley, while 270 will enter CedarBridge.

To ensure that each school was assigned students with a similar range of levels of achievement, students were placed in "higher, middle and lower'' bands based on prior achievement. And they were randomly selected by computer from the bands so that each school received equal proportions of students from each band.

"School principals were not involved in the selection process,'' Mr. Smith said. "What we did do was to assure that students of a broad range entered the (Berkeley) school, like at CedarBridge.

"Berkeley were originally concerned about the broad range of abilities and that's why the Ministry has promised to supply additional resources.'' He added that each of the 370 students were assigned a numeric code by computer and they were randomly selected by computer.