Jubilant children can now go to their chosen schools after education chiefs admitted an embarrassing gaffe.

Pupils were being forced to walk past their first choice school's front gates to go to another school further away because of Essex County Council rules.

Let in - Luke Dowsett, Jack Duffield and Phoebe Hawkins will now be allowed to go to Leigh Beck school Picture: TERENCE BUNCH

Danny Dowsett and his wife Nicola, of Silver Point Marine, Canvey, had threatened to leave the island after being told their three-and-a-half-year-old son Luke had been refused a place at Leigh Beck Infants School, in Point Road.

This would have meant getting him a place at one of the island's other infant schools and actually walking past Leigh Beck every day to get there.

However, the island's headteachers made a mistake when calculating the distance between potential pupils' homes and the schools - one of the criteria for deciding who got a place.

The Dowsetts have now received a letter from Leigh Beck confirming Luke does have a place after all.

Mrs Dowsett said: "We are thrilled Luke can go to Leigh Beck, but the whole process has been a joke from beginning to end."

Furious parents contacted Castle Point MP Bob Spink who wrote to Local Education Authority Essex County Council.

Kevin Wilby, Essex's planning and admissions advisor, in a letter to Mr Spink, said: "It has been brought to my attention that due to an administrative error the group of headteachers on the island who made the decisions on applications, did not measure all home to school distances entirely accurately.

"This means some children who should have been offered places at the school did not receive them and that some children were offered places in error."

Published Friday, May 16, 2003

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