PARENTS in a York suburb say they are worried that the rising number of secondary age pupils in the city will leave their children without places at their local church school.

Many pupils leaving Upper Poppleton Junior School have traditionally attended Manor CE School in Boroughbridge Road.

The Church of England School, which controls its own admission policies, takes in 75 per cent of pupils on religious grounds, leaving a quarter of its places to other children.

This year all the non-church places went to brothers and sisters of pupils already at the school and there was no room for 14 Poppleton pupils.

Those who did not get in were offered places at Lowfield School in Acomb instead, as Poppleton falls within its catchment area under the new areas drawn up by the City of York Council.

Parent Sue Wiper told councillors yesterday that Manor and also King James' School in Knaresborough were seen as the community schools for the village.

She said getting to Lowfield was a much longer journey than Manor, and it had no transport links to Poppleton.

She said a meeting held to discuss the issue in Poppleton last week was attended by 100 parents. Poppleton councillor Coun Janet Hopton asked if officers could look at the issue in their review of how York's new catchment areas were working.

Coun Janet Looker, executive member for education, said she was happy to add it to the review.

"We cannot tell Manor what admissions policy to adopt," she said.

"Part of the problem has arisen because of the bulge that all secondary schools are dealing with and the problem for Poppleton is there isn't a local community LEA secondary school. Manor's the natural school for a lot of people in that area."

But she said Lowfield had received a good Ofsted report recently and Jim Winter, acting education director, said parents who had visited Lowfield had been impressed by what they had seen.

Peter Smith, headteacher at Manor, said there was going to be a review of the school's admissions policy but he could not predict what it might do.

He said the number of pupils coming in each year was set in agreement with the council and it would also be difficult to increase it because the school was on quite a small site.

"We do serve the local community but you also have to bear in mind we are a Church of England school," he said.

Updated: 16:50 Wednesday, July 04, 2001