PARENTS living less than half a mile from Park Street Primary are threatening to teach their children at home after being told they do not live close enough for them to attend.
The school has held appeal meetings with 17 sets of parents after they appealed a decision to decline their children entry into the school.Most of those appeals are understood to have been unsuccessful.
Parent Lee Smythe, 35, was one of the parents receiving bad news. Lee, of Dove Road, Wombwell, wanted daughter Olivia, four, to go to the school as he feels the alternative Kings Oak is too far away given her health issues.
He said: "We applied for Park Street as it is the closest school from our house at 0.4 miles.
"My daughter has a condition with her feet and has to wear insoles which causes her discomfort and a mile is the maximum she can walk.
"We have applied for Park Street only to be knocked back and offered Kings Oak which is nearly two miles from our house and will mean walking past Park Street to get there."
Olivia had attended the school's nursery and has made friends.
"We scrimped and saved to buy a house on Dove Road thinking that we would be able to get our children into the school.
"I'm going to fight this all the way and would rather pack in my job and homeschool Olivia than take her to King's Oak."
A council spokesman said: "The school admission preference statistics for 2013-2014 show that 91.48 per cent of primary pupils were offered their first preference school.
"However, it is not always possible to offer parents a place of their first-preference where the school has many more applications than places available."
A council spokesman said the priorities considered when schools are oversubscribed are, in order of priority, children in public care, children who will have brothers or sisters in school at the time of admission, and children living nearest to school.
"There is no guaranteed onward placement from nursery into a school. The application process is separate and different criteria are used."
