A GROWING number of Labour councils are taking parents to court to try to prevent them from sending their children to the school of their choice.

Alfie Sidford, 4, won the right to attend his popular local school in Haringey, North London, from an independent appeal panel. But the Labour local authority is spending thousands of pounds to take his parents to the High Court to send him to a more distant primary.

In Reading, Berkshire, a group of parents have spent £2,000 each to hire a barrister to uphold an independent appeal decision to send their children to the popular local school. Labour-controlled Reading council is fighting them in court because there are empty desks to fill elsewhere in the borough.

Both cases fly in the face of Tony Blair’s commitment to parental choice and are driving the Government’s urgent quest to make the expansion of popular schools a reality.

Anthony Sidford, Alfie’s father, said that his son wanted to go to nearby Weston Park primary school to join his friends and still did not know that the council was battling to stop him.

Mr Sidford, who is representing himself in the High Court case, added: “I never thought that making an application to go to the local primary school would end up in the High Court. When Labour came to power in 1997, one of the mantras was ‘education, education, education’. We are fighting for the right for our child to be provided with a good local convenient education and the independent appeal panel agreed with us. But it does not seem as if the local Labour council is actually giving substance to the rhetoric.

“It seems strange that Haringey council can find money for lawyers but is apparently unable to provide enough places.”

The council said that it regretted the distress to the Sidfords but it had a duty to all parents to treat every case consistently in line with the law.

Reading council is battling 12 sets of parents in the High Court who won the right for their children to attend Caversham primary school at an independent appeal panel. Some even have siblings at the oversubscribed school.

Clare Cummings, who wants her daughter Chloe, 4, to attend the school next month along with her older sister, Gemma, said: “We won our appeal and then we were taken to the High Court and had our appeals quashed. We are going back to a second appeal later this month. Parental choice has just not worked for us. We have had a terrible time.

“The parents hired a barrister and a lawyer and we have all got to pay around £2,000.”

Reading council said that to admit the children would affect education at the school and cost £200,000 for one extra teacher over six years.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Margot Fonteyn: In her footsteps
• Forget beautiful people, let's have wonky Brits
• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power