Parents facing battle to get place in school
PARENTS in Butetown say they are facing an exhausting battle to get their children into the secondary school their families have always attended.
The south Cardiff community is roughly the same distance to three different English-language secondary schools in the city – Fitzalan in Leckwith, Willows in Tremorfa and Cathays High.
Yet parents say they can’t get their children into the school their families have always attended – Fitzalan.
All are ranked as good schools, Cathays is green in the colour coding system Wales uses, as is Fitzalan, while Willows is yellow.
Many of the children in Butetown are at primary schools that traditionally feed into Fitzalan – and many have siblings who were able to get in before catchment area changes and more housing developments made it harder.
Hundreds of homes built on the former Ely Mill site in Canton and in Grangetown and Butetown have meant tougher competition.
In one year, just 15 of 56 pupils at Mount Stuart Primary in Butetown got a place at Fitzalan.
This year, Fitzalan was the second most oversubscribed secondary in the city, refusing 154 pupils.
Kodor Miah said despite living in Butetown and Fitzalan being his closest secondary school, his soon to be 11-year-old son Arman, a pupil of Llandough Primary, wasn’t given a place.
Kodor said: “My son is supposed to go to high school this year and I haven’t got a place for him at the moment.
“I applied for Fitzalan for him but they rejected it saying it’s too far away. My whole family went to Fitzalan and we’ve never had a problem, but now it’s really hard. Not just for myself but there’s a lot of other parents in my situation.”
Kodor added that he isn’t sure how they’ll manage if he has to take his son to one school further away and his other child to a primary school in another part of the city.
Butetown councillor Saeed Ebrahim said the situation has left many parents to have “distrust in the system”.
He said: “The docks postcode means children are being offered schools not adequate for their learning. This is driving more parents to home school their offspring and it’s pushing them into poverty due to parents having to leave work to stay home to teach their children.”
Calling for an end to the “postcode
lottery”, he added: “The appeal system that follows the refusals is rigorous and there are many barriers, struggles and a lack of understanding for parents here for whom English is a second language as well as the inability to understand how to best fight for the system.
“Parents in more affluent areas turn up prepared with solicitors and representatives to fight their corner yet ours have to gamble their children’s future and hope and pray they win.”
A Cardiff council spokesperson said: “Applying for a school place can be a particularly stressful time and many of us can empathise with parents going through this process.
“Living in a catchment area doesn’t guarantee pupils a place at their local school, but many of the secondary schools in Cardiff do have enough spaces to cater for in-catchment applications.
“There is a place for every school age child in the city, and our 21st Century Schools programme has seen the council deliver significant numbers of extra school places in Cardiff, through building brand new schools and expanding existing provision.
“This will continue, and will help us to ensure we can match the supply to demand for school places across the city.”