8:20am Thursday 24th July 2008
By Helen Crane
In a topsy-turvy rule children in the catchment area of Southfield Park Primary School who live furthest away from the oversubscribed school will have priority over those who live nearer.
The extraordinary rule is to be introduced following a judgement by the schools adjudicator after appeals from parents who failed to get places for their children at the popular new school in Long Grove Road, Epsom.
The adjudicator, Dr Peter Matthews, decided that children living in Clarendon Park, one of the new estates built on the sites of the former Epsom psychiatric hospitals, were disadvantaged because they lived further away from Southfield Park and other primary schools in the district than children living in Livingstone Park.
He has decided to change the normal rule that children living closest to the school where they are seeking a place get priority over those whose homes are further away to the other way round so that children from Clarendon Park have a chance of getting a school place near their homes.
From September 2009 the school will double the number of children admitted from 30 to 60 after temporary classrooms are installed. Eventually a permanent extension will be built.
It is hoped that the extra capacity will mean that the school can take all the pupils who want a place but if it is oversubscribed the new rule will come into play.
County Councillor Colin Taylor said: “The adjudicator’s novel requirement to give priority to those within the catchment area furthest from the school, which is binding for 2009, is specially designed to favour Clarendon Park which is further from any alternative school.“ The catchment area will include Clarendon Park, Livingstone Park, Horton Park and West Park Farm and the north side of Horton Hill.
Southfield Park opened in 2003 when it started its first class in an old sports pavilion before moving into the new building in March 2004.
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