Families face wait over school places 20 miles away

Children who have been allocated secondary school places as far as 20 miles (32km) away from their homes will have to wait more than a month to find out if they can attend somewhere closer, a council has admitted.

Dozens of families in Banbury and its surrounding villages have reported their children being given spaces at The Cooper School in Bicester.

Oxfordshire County Council previously said it was working to find the children spaces closer to their homes.

But Sean Gaul - the authority's education chief - has now confirmed that families will have to wait until 8 May to find out if their applications for schools closer to home have been successful.

He said the council had so far created an "additional" 47 school places in Banbury for those affected, but these could not yet be allocated to specific children due to the legal admissions process.

Gaul said he was "more and more confident" there would be positive outcomes for all of the affected families.

"That is what we're working towards for the last 18 days relentlessly, and I'm very confident that's what we're going to do," he added.

Criticising the situation, Banbury MP Sean Woodcock called for "clarity, reassurance and confirmation" for parents.

"I have heard from many families who say that this uncertainty is causing them extreme stress and anxiety," he said.

Some families were "even considering uprooting their lives and moving area in order to ensure their children are able to attend school", he added.

Jonathan Sivyer previously told the BBC that his youngest child had been allocated a place at a school in the opposite direction to the one that his three eldest attend, in Warwickshire.

"We were trying to move house and get everyone into the same school, and he was happy with that," he said.

"But now he doesn't even know that he can go to the same school with his brothers and sisters which is even worse."

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