Birmingham City Council have apologised for offering more than 20 ten and 11-year-olds places at their\u00a0first choice secondary school\u00a0have had their\u00a0offers withdrawn\u00a0after a council mix-up<\/p>\n
A total of 25 Year Six pupils were told they had secured place at Ark St Alban’s Academy in Highgate, a co-ed secondary school rated \u2018outstanding\u2019 by Ofsted, but were parents were then contacted 24 hours later to be told there had been a mix-up.<\/p>\n
The children were instead offered places at schools including Ark Boulton Academy, Swanshurst School and City Academy.<\/p>\n
Parent Najla al Dhaheri whose son Abdullah was initially offered a place at Ark St Alban\u2019s said \u201cI was really chuffed when I got the offer letter and then the next day that\u2019s when we got the bad news\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all received letters saying they weren\u2019t actually accepted. We\u2019ve got kids crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur next door neighbour got into the school but not my child.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son\u2019s cousin was accepted \u2013 but she lives further away than we do from the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead we\u2019ve been offered Ark Boulton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s too far away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to take my son there, and I have two daughters in primary school who have to be taken at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband is ill and I have to look after him as well \u2013 how am I meant to be in three places at once?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jaweria Siddiqi, whose daughter Imaan was wrongly offered a place, hosted a meeting of parents of 14 of the 25 children to discuss the error.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really liked it when we got the offer for Ark St Alban\u2019s and we wrote back accepting it\u201d, said Ms Siddiqi.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then they said they would withdraw the offer and give me a place at somewhere I didn\u2019t even list as one of my choices \u2013 City Academy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a phone call from a man at the council trying to convince me to accept the place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said no. I said my daughter was happy with Ark St Alban\u2019s and she was going to go there \u2013 she was offered a place.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy second choice was University of Birmingham School.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they wanted to refuse my application, they should have given me a place there.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter really doesn\u2019t want to go to City Academy, we didn\u2019t even attend the open evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council blamed the fault on \u201can error while assessing whether children met its admission criteria\u201d.<\/p>\n
It wrote to the affected families apologising for the mistake \u201cat what we know is an anxious time for parents\u201d.<\/p>\n
A council spokesman said: \u201cOur school admissions team has processed more than 16,000 secondary applications this year, but unfortunately a very small number of children were wrongly offered a place at Ark St Alban\u2019s Academy due to an error while assessing whether they met its admission criteria.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as we became aware, we contacted all parents affected to apologise for the mistake and have ensured that their children were offered a new school place and added to Ark St Alban\u2019s waiting list.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf any parent is unhappy with an offer then they are entitled to appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Birmingham City Council have apologised for offering more than 20 ten and 11-year-olds places at their\u00a0first choice secondary school\u00a0have had their\u00a0offers withdrawn\u00a0after a council mix-up A total of 25 Year Six pupils were told they had secured place at Ark St Alban’s Academy in Highgate, a co-ed secondary school rated \u2018outstanding\u2019 by Ofsted, but were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,53,37,3,112],"tags":[897],"class_list":["post-25996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-latest","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-councils-mix-up-with-secondary-school-places"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}