Mum counts the cost as Lickey End school appeal fails

Buy photos » Sophie, six, Holly, four, and mum Helen Prosser outside Lickey End First School. Picture by Neville Collins. 201207ncb

A BROMSGROVE mum has been left counting the cost of six school trips a day from September after losing the bid for her daughter to go to Lickey End First School like her big sister.

Helen Prosser of Birmingham Road, had her appeal dismissed by Worcestershire County Council last Wednesday (July 25) and is now in despair having exhausted all her options.

Holly, four, faces going to second choice Blackwell First School instead of joining her friends and her big sister Sophie, six at Lickey End First School.

Helen said her summer had already been ruined by worrying about the psychological impacts on her youngest daughter.

But now following the council’s latest rebuff the reality is setting in and has left her with a morning routine she described as a ‘nightmare’.

From September she will have to get her two daughters ready for school, take Sophie to Lickey End then drive two miles to Blackwell First before travelling another three miles to Aston Fields Middle School where she now works as a teaching assistant.

Helen told the Standard her family was already struggling to run a car and doing an extra five miles a day is going to double her petrol costs.

“There’s just no way I can get to three schools before half eight. My mornings are just going to be so stressful. What on earth am I going to do?”

Initially Worcestershire County Council refused Holly a place because she lives out of the catchment area albeit by one house.

However Helen believes the council must be accountable for failing to tell her she was out of the catchment area when she succesfully applied for Sophie to go to Lickey End in 2009. She said was never told Sophie only got in because only 24 children from within the area applied.

As well as appealing she had written to Bromsgrove MP Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove, the Prime Minister and gained more than a 100 names of support on a petition.

“This is so frustrating. No-one is willing to sacrifice anything to help my daughter,” she added.

“I am fed up with being fobbed off with the class size prejudice rubbish.”

A council spokesman said: “There is a national legal limit on the size of infant classes, and therefore the authority is unable to admit more than 30 children.

“Unfortunately Mrs Prosser’s application did not meet the oversubscription criteria enough. It is not for us to comment on the decision of an Independent Appeal Panel,” he added

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