'Not enough school places'

12:47pm Thursday 7th April 2005

Nearly 500 children have been refused a place at their choice of secondary school, it emerged this week, amid complaints from parents that there are not enough good schools to go round.

Judy Difiore’s ten-year-old son Bobby has not been offered a place at any of the local education authority’s (LEA) secondaries. He is one of 481 ten or 11-year-olds across the borough who discovered on March 1 — when school places were announced — they did not get any of their six choices in the allocation system.

Mrs Difiore, from Hale Drive, Mill Hill, hit out this week at the ‘black hole’ in Barnet’s secondary school system, saying there were not enough places for clever children.

“Barnet has a huge deficit of good schools — they have got some really, really good schools and some which really are not, but nothing in the middle, certainly not in this area. We are in a black hole.

“My son is fairly bright. He got through various levels of entrance exams, but he’s not up there with the elite, and so he is not able to get to a good school. He so far hasn’t been offered a place at all.” This year, 3,608 students from Barnet applied for the 3,409 secondary school places there are available from September next year.

And while the numbers even up during the allocation process — leaving enough places for all the children the FROM Front Page borough is responsible for educating — parents are still unhappy.

Mandy Salmon, whose ten-year-old son Joel has been offered a place at The Compton School, in Summers Lane, North Finchley, said she also felt there was not enough on offer in Barnet for parents of very bright children.

She said: “There just aren’t enough schools. There are a lot of bright kids. They have all been tutored to get these places, but they can’t all have them.” Both Joel and Bobby, who go to Frith Manor School in Lullington Garth, Woodside Park, have been privately tutored over the last year to equip them for the barrage of tests for the borough’s best schools. Both of them applied for the hotly contested Queen Elizabeth’s School, in Queens Road, Barnet.

To get into QE Boys, children have to sit two tests, and are only allowed to take the second if they pass the first. Many of those who do not get in will apply for private school, a Barnet Council spokeswoman said.

According to the spokeswoman, the allocation procedure, which came in this year, is progressing more swiftly than in the past. She said 406 pupils are still waiting for places, while there are 408 places left, and most of them should hear in the next 12 weeks where they will go. She said 75 per cent of Barnet’s schools achieve above the national average.

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