A BOURNEMOUTH family is currently without a school place for their four-year-old daughter after they rejected the council’s offer of a school four miles from their home.

Simone Garland and Martyn Dear, of Wordsworth Avenue in Strouden Park, hoped to send their daughter Tamzin Dear to St Walburga’s, Epiphany or Muscliff primary school but were given a place at Kingsleigh in East Howe instead.

Unhappy with the allocation and unable to see how they could complete the 17-mile round trip every day, they refused the offer and are now hoping to go on the waiting lists for Muscliff and Queen’s Park Infants.

But it will be weeks until they know whether they have any chance of getting in to either of these schools, leaving the family frustrated and angry.

Simone, a service manager for people with learning disabilities, said: “We were devastated to see we had been offered a place at Kingsleigh. It was the worst week of our lives.

“The process is highly unfair and it is absolutely impossible to talk to anybody at the council about it. They just don’t want to know.

“We applied to three schools within 1.5miles of our home and we got one that is over four miles away. Everything about Kingsleigh is wrong for us. Tamzin will not have any friends there and I worry she will be picked on. I want her to go to a local school, not one miles away.

“Plus we both work full-time and we cannot feasibly take her there and get to work on time.”

And Martyn, a gas engineer, said: “I don’t understand why there are so many spaces in just one area of town. Kingsleigh, Elmrise and Heathlands were all undersubscribed. Where are the people who live in those areas sending their children? It seems like the council has based its predictions on the fact there will be a huge demand for school places in that area and they’ve got it wrong.”

Simone added: “These children were born in 2008, the council should have been reviewing their policies and their data on a more frequent basis so that they would have suitable school places available for them.

“The worst thing is that you don’t get any answers from the council at all, you’re just left thinking ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Do I give up my job?

“Do we go down the road of educating her privately? It’s so frustrating.”