Mum ‘terrified’ by son’s 12-mile school commute
AMOTHER has been left ‘terrified’ for her son who is facing a 12-mile commute after being the only child rejected from his local high-school.
Claire Hollinshead, whose 11-year-old son Daniel currently attends Holy Trinity School in Littleborough says he has been left devastated by the prospect of being seperated from his friends.
She claims her son will now be forced to catch four buses a day, two each way, to attend Kingsway High – some six miles away – after he was rejected by nearby Wardle Academy.
Two other schools, Hollingworth Academy and Todmorden High School, were also too ful to take him.
The mum-of-two says Daniel will have to set off an hour and a half before school starts as there is currently no direct bus service from their house to the Academy in Rochdale.
Following an unsuccessful appeal by his parents, Daniel has now been forced to see the school nurse with symptoms of stress and anxiety, his mother claims.
“He is not doing great. Daniel has never shown any anxiety or issues and then we took him to see the school nurse for something else shortly after our appeal and she did a stress test which came back quite high,” Claire told the Observer.
“Both my husband and I were quite shocked because he’d never expressed this before. He’s an open child.
“We went back a month later and she did the test again which came back even higher. He got all upset saying that he felt stressed and anxious since finding out he couldn’t go to school with his friends – it’s awful.
“He’s trying his best and we are trying to keep him as positive as we can but only this week he said he’d had to ask his teacher to speak to the class because people were teasing him about why he wasn’t going to Wardle.”
Claire claims that if the admissions policy was the same as when the school had been led by the local authority, Daniel would have been offered a place at Wardle School. She said that when the school became an academy their admissions policy changed – allowing one of Daniel’s friends who lives 30ft away to get in – but not him.
“They are an academy and can make up their own admissions policy which I understand, it’s just the rules are different now and unfortunately it’s local children that are suffering because of it,” Claire said.
“For us it’s not just about the distance. Yes, I am terrified that my 11 year-old will have to catch four buses a day on his own when he has never had to do that before, but it’s also about him having people that he can make friends with or travel to school with.
“We are trying to get a bus that would run from Littleborough direct to the Kingsway High School, which would alleviate some of the worry.”
Academies are not maintained by the local authority in which they reside and have the ability to set their own admissions policy.
Chief executive of the Wardle Trust, Graham Wright, said: “Prior to becoming an academy in 2013 we were a Foundation school and, as such, we were our own admissions authority not under the jurisdiction of the Local Authority - our policy has run independent of the Local Authorities for approximately 25 years.
“Prior to academisation the policy stated, as now, the ‘shortest safe walking route.’ At this time we were not full and it is only in the last three years that we have been oversubscribed.
“As the school’s representative at appeals, it has been heart-breaking to hear of the position that many parents have been left in.
“We are looking at ways in which we can help to work with others to reduce this problem, but with a projected shortfall of 600 places in the Pennine township by 2024, sadly, many more parents with deserving cases are going to be in this position.”