Bristol primary school place offers 'impossible'
Hannah Rowe, of Halsbury Road, Bishopston, has been allocated Badock's Wood Primary School in Southmead, but her father Mark, 40 said the journey would be very difficult for him and his wife Lucy, 39, as they also have Thomas, two, and baby Oscar.
He said: "It is going to be impossible to walk or take the bus the 2.5 miles to Badock's Wood with two younger children as well as Hannah. It will take more than 90 minutes each way, and we're being expected to do it two times a day, five times a week for seven years.
"We're trying to weigh up the positives from this and not finding any. We will not send our four-year-old on a bus. The offer letters are sending children to the four corners of the city. The council is now saying they have offered every child a place. That does not strike me as a lofty ambition – it's a legal requirement, but the spaces are in the wrong places."
2 Comments
by McNulty, Bishopston
Thursday, April 30 2009, 10:45AM
“Mike, perhaps he doesn't mention a car because he doesn't have one. The council cannot allocate places in the expectation that children will be driven there: it is environmentally unsound and means the child will be educated in an area he or she feels no part of. How long do you think it would take to walk 2.5 miles with three children? That trip would have to be done four times a day. It is an absurd position to put someone in.
There may be people in the country who live further away than that, but in that case two and a half miles may be their closest school. They have made a choice to live there. But when you have half a dozen schools closer to you than the one you have been offered, it is an entirely different matter. I would be furious if that happened to me.”
by Mike, Staple Hill, Bristol
Thursday, April 30 2009, 10:06AM
“Fair play to this guy for not seeing driving as option... but it is exactly that..an option. He cant really claim that taking his child to a school 2.5 miles away is impossible. Im sure there are people who live further away from their childrens school than that.”