Choices

I'm furious. In fact I'm livid - in disbelief at a council which studiously follows stupid and arbitrary bureaucratic rules. Logic and common sense have been abandoned.

I'm angry at a government to which 'parental choice' is fiction.

Bitter about a schools building programme which has caused a reduction in school places to a point where schools are so 'heavily oversubscribed' that people can't send their children to their school of choice.

Anyway, you get the message - I'm pissed off.

My son has been denied a place at our secondary school of choice - because we live outside the school's catchment area.

However, we live less than 400m from the school. That's about a 6-8 minute walk. That's also despite the fact that my son is leaving a primary school that is further away than our secondary school of choice and the primary school is a feeder to that secondary school. My son's best friend manages to be in the catchment area despite living over a kilometre away from the school.

The school he has been allocated, the second 'choice' on the application, is three times the distance and requires the crossing of a dual carriageway. So much for the safe routes to school concept.

It's concerning that dogmatic adherence to policy comes before an objective risk assessment of child safety.

The almost religious devotion to arbitrary lines on a map is council bureaucracy at it's most Kafkaesque. What is the point of making choices on an application form if they are just going to be ignored anyway?

Choice? Don't make me laugh.