PARENTS of junior school pupils were celebrating today after they were told their children could go to Tadcaster Grammar School after all.

North Yorkshire County Council has told them the 14 final-year junior school pupils from Bishopthorpe, Acaster Malbis and Long Marston, which are all within Tadcaster Grammar's normal catchment area, can now have places.

The move follows protests by parents that the council's own Guide For Parents booklet contained no reference to the reason they were turned down - distance away from school. Education director Cynthia Welbourn admitted today this was missing from the guide and said it would be rewritten for future years.

Parents were told that because the school was oversubscribed this year, those children living furthest away within the catchment area could not have places.

But one of the parents, solicitor Andrew Lindsay, said a letter from his firm, Denison Till, had pointed out to the council that the guide only referred to the "distance from school" test for children living outside the catchment area.

Therefore, it argued, the council had not followed its own policy.

Miss Welbourn said the council had a well-established custom and practice to apply the distance rule even within catchment areas, although this situation only rarely occurred.

"Nonetheless what is said in the guide does refer only explicitly to children outside the normal area of the school and as a good authority we must honour what we have actually said."

She said the 14 had originally been turned down because Tadcaster had received 360 applications for 250 places, but the school had said it could accommodate the extra 14.

The remaining children who were turned down all lived outside the catchment area, she said. No children living in the catchment areas of other North Yorkshire schools had been affected.

Meanwhile, parents were celebrating the good news.

Nick Hutchings, whose 11-year-old daughter Joanne is one of those getting a place at Tadcaster after all, said: "I am over the moon. It's fantastic. Justice has been done."

Jackie Capaldi, mum of Oliver, said: "We're elated, it's absolutely fantastic. It's been a very, very stressful time. It's only been a couple of weeks, but it's felt like a lifetime."

Mum Suzanne Dickinson, whose daughter, Emma, was also affected, said: "I cried, I was really, really pleased. Everybody's worked hard for this, especially Andrew."

Updated: 11:25 Friday, March 15, 2002