PARENTS at an academy school are to be charged £45 a year to drop off their children after traffic congestion was deemed to be putting pupils’ lives at risk.

It is believed to be the first school in the country to charge for parking.

St Gregory’s Catholic Academy in Stoke-on-Trent is planning to build a 50space car park to tackle the problem.

However, the school says it needs a warden to oversee the site, and it is set to charge £2 a week for a parking permit, or up to £15 a term. The school expects to incur further costs for the installation of new fences, signs and gates, and for the maintenance of the car park.

Margaret Yates, the principal, said: “As the head, and also a parent, I fully understand the difficulty in parking around the school, but the safety of the children has to be put first, above everything else.

“We have a budget for the education of our children and, of course, safeguarding comes into that. But we cannot spend that money on a car park, which is why we must look elsewhere to cover the costs.” Some parents have backed the principal’s decision.

Tracy Gregory, 46, whose two children attend the school, said: “It is awful, and there are times when you can’t get down the road. We go out of our way to avoid it.

“People park dangerously or park on double yellow lines and that shouldn’t happen. It is wrong.

“As parents we want what is best for our kids and we don’t mind paying a little extra. I’m very happy with what the school is doing.” However, other parents are unwilling to pay for parking and believe the school has a duty to foot the bill. Michael Underwood, a 43-year-old who also has two children at the school, said: “The traffic is a concern but I’ve never heard of anybody being charged money to just to drop children at the school gates – it’s like a parent tax.

“Surely the school has a duty to protect the pupils and should pay for a car park in order to facilitate this. It shouldn’t be the parents paying for it.

“I think it’s outrageous really. I think people will just carry on using the road out of protest.” Elsewhere, it emerged that students are no longer allowed to do handstands and cartwheels at a school because of safety fears.

The ban on the “gymnastic activities” during break times was introduced at Old Priory Primary Academy, in Plymouth, Devon, because a number of pupils suffered minor injuries attempting the tricks.

The school said it had no option but to issue the ban, because handstands and cartwheels were “beyond the children’s capabilities”. Emma Hermon-Wright, the head teacher, said the ban covered all “gymnastic movements” on school grounds.

She said: “Following a number of minor incidents we took action to ban these gymnastic activities during play and lunch.

“Through PE lessons in primary schools, pupils are carefully taught to develop movements of their bodies in safe, controlled and supported ways.

“At playtime our children were not performing these in such a way and pupils were attempting gymnastic movements beyond their capability.”