news story

22nd February 2010

MP Calls for Changes to School Admission Rules to Keep Families Together

Photo shows Steve Webb MP receiving the petition from Sharon Taylor and her children ( left to right ) Libby, Issey and Jake

Northavon MP Steve Webb has joined forces with local families to push for a change in primary school admission rules to ensure that more children can attend the same school as their older brothers and sisters. Under present rules first priority is given to local children who have a sibling at a school and then to other local children. But for applicants from outside a two mile radius of a school it makes no difference if you have a family member already attending. In rural areas in particular, this can mean that parents receive school offers which mean getting young children to different schools sometimes miles apart.

Several families seeking places at Trinity School, Acton Turville, found themselves in this situation last year and contacted their MP Steve Webb to raise their concerns. The MP visited the school and talked to parents and has now made a formal submission to South Gloucestershire Council to ask them to look again at their admission rules. Steve Webb said that people often did not know about the consultation and that in some years the Council had not received any comments at all. This time, the MP has passed on a petition signed by more than 150 people calling for a change in the rules and has written his own letter making the case for change.

Sharon Taylor, a mother of three from West Littleton , is one of those who signed the petition. In 2009 she was told that although she already had a child at Trinity School, this would not be taken account of in the admission rules because she lived too far away. As a result she faced having to take young children in different directions at the start and end of each school day.

Mrs Taylor said:

“The situation just doesn’t make sense. It’s completely unfair to expect families to send their children to different schools. For me that would mean travelling in two opposite directions every day - it would be impossible to get my children to and from school on time.”

Steve Webb said that he had repeatedly raised this issue with the Council in recent years but that because his representations had not been made within the formal consultation window they had not been considered when the rules were reviewed.

Commenting, he said:

"Admission rules that take no account of the fact that you already have a child at a school, simply because you live more than a few miles away from the school, seem totally unfair to me. In rural areas in particular there may be many reasons why a family does not live very close to a school, but to penalise families by sending their children to different schools is totally unacceptable. Once children who live locally to a school have been offered places, the Council should look next at applications from other families who already have a child at the school. Most people would think that was only fair".