Devastated by rejection

Jun 24 2009 by Carol Young, Rutherglen Reformer

WE are parents who have had our placement request for our son Ciaran to attend St Bride’s Primary School in Cambuslang rejected.

We are both devastated by the rejection from South Lanarkshire Council for Ciaran’s placement request.

He has been at St Bride’s Nursery for the last two years and has got to know many of the teachers, the deputy principal and the principal teacher.

In particular, we selected St Bride’s Nursery School in the hope that our previously shy and nervous child would benefit from the continuity between the nursery and primary school by becoming established with a familiar place and set of friends.

In actual fact it took a full six months for him to settle at nursery. It was an extremely upsetting experience for us as a family.

To simply remove our child from this security at such a young age would have a damaging and detrimental impact on him during his transition into primary one.

Therefore remaining within the setting of St Bride’s would make primary one a more natural progression for Ciaran without the added trauma of uprooting him from who he knows and what he knows and placing him in an alien environment away from his friends and teachers.

This is an extremely crucial point within our child’s social and educational development and as parents we want to give him the best possible start that we can.

We feel that South Lanarkshire Council have treated all of the parents in a terrible manner, and are victimising us for exercising our right as parents to select the school which we want our child to attend.

Further, it is felt by all for the parents concerned that the council are using scare tactics and are effectively putting us at their mercy by informing us that we will lose our right to our local school and by the manner in which the appeals process has been conducted.

This is people’s lives that they are affecting!

Stephen & Beverley Owens