The row over school places pits pupil safety and parental choice against the education authority's allocation policy.

It is the safety issue which has caused most concern among parents of those children at Fishergate Primary and others who have been placed at Burnholme Community College.

That involves a journey of two and a half miles, twice as far as to the closest school, Fulford.

It is not simply the distance that parents are worried about, however. Many children have travelled further to school without coming to any harm. But if they cycled there, they did so on relatively quiet roads. Otherwise, they caught a bus that delivered them safely to the school gates.

To get to Burnholme, former Fishergate pupils will have to cross several busy roads. It is a hazardous journey for anyone to undertake.

For children as young as 11, who will often have to undertake the trip in the dark, it is too much to ask.

The allocation also blows a hole through the much-vaunted policy of parental choice. Parents are asked to select four secondary schools, in order of preference, for their child.

Many of the Fishergate parents will have included Fulford and Millthorpe on their list, on the grounds of both geographical convenience and academic reputation. And yet the education authority is imposing Burnholme on their child.

For all the notice the authority took of their views, parents might as well have put down Inverness High or the Martian Secondary.

Admittedly, City of York Council's school admissions policy is in a period of transition. It wants to change the system so there is a greater geographical link between primary and secondary schools - ironically, Fishergate would feed Millthorpe if this comes into force.

The education authority also has to deal with an excess of surplus places. It has already made the difficult decision to close Queen Anne School.

But this period of flux is not enough to explain away the decision to send Fishergate pupils to Burnholme. The council have known the size of the school year to which these pupils belong for some years. With careful forward planning, it should have been possible to avoid such problems.

The situation as it stands is unacceptable. Pupil safety should be our paramount consideration.

The council must provide a bus service - or reallocate children to schools they can reach in safety.

see NEWS 'York parents fume over school places school places'

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