PARENTS refused access to a popular primary school have launched a legal appeal to have the decision overturned.
Families refused entry to Glendale Primary School, on the south side of Glasgow, will take their cases to the sheriff court.
READ MORE: Pupils at risk of 'collapsing' under burden of new assessments, SQA survey finds
Some 20 families were denied access to the new school under placing requests despite their children having older brothers and sisters there - while an additional 20 were refused when applying for the first time.
The decision by Glasgow City Council means pupils will have to be educated separately from their older brothers and sisters.
The refusals, which were made on the grounds the school was not big enough, came just months before the opening of a brand new building which replaces the existing Glendale Primary in Pollokshields.
Iain Nisbet, a solicitor for some of the families, said: "The parents involved in appealing against refused placing requests for Glendale Primary know the school and many of them have older children already in attendance.
"There is room for a larger P1 intake and and the city council agreed with them as recently as February when it set a cap of 49 P1 pupils for the school.
"Now they want to restrict the intake to 34 and parents of children who have been refused a place do not understand why a larger school building seems to have less space than the old one."
John Daly, chairman of the Glendale Parents' Council, added: "Glendale is probably the most multicultural school in Scotland with something like 26 different languages spoken in the playground and the school's recent inspection results were of an exceptionally high standard.
READ MORE: Pupils at risk of 'collapsing' under burden of new assessments, SQA survey finds
"Between the gifted, brilliant leadership of the staff and the very active parent council Glendale has created a first-class model of what a good community school looks and feels like.
"It is not only the case that over 20 children will be deprived of starting their education in such a healthy, dynamic environment with their brothers and sisters - just as important is the damage done to the existing community of learning in Glendale."
In a letter to the school's parent council earlier this year Maureen McKenna, Glasgow's executive director of education, said she understood the concerns of parents, but stressed the importance of "protecting the learning and teaching environment" for all children in Glendale.
She said: "You will be very familiar with the concerns raised over the years by Glendale parents about the lack of breakout space and general purpose rooms in the old building.
"We are committed to protecting that space as much as possible to enhance children's learning. I don't want to spend millions on a new school only to have the same concerns raised in a year about the lack of space for children."
Ms McKenna said it was not usual for the council to build a school to accommodate placing requests adding: "We should be building schools to accommodate catchment children."
READ MORE: Pupils at risk of 'collapsing' under burden of new assessments, SQA survey finds
One parent said: "It is very concerning to the families to have brothers and sisters split up in this way and feeling part of one community and then having to be part of two different communities. It took many families by surprise and it is very difficult to adapt when everyone had been expecting to go there."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel