A POPULATION increase means Callington Community College will almost certainly have to turn away some children living in its catchment area in September despite attempts to get the admission level changed. The college has appealed to the School Adjudicator's Office so it can increase its intake from 230 to 266 but the result of that appeal may be too late for pupils this year. Letters will go out to 36 parents on Monday informing them that their first choice of school for their children has been denied. Many of the pupils attend feeder primary schools, live locality or have siblings at the school. Staff and governors had predicted a rise in admission numbers and say the college could accommodate the extra pupils which would effectively equate to an extra class but it has to abide by Cornwall County Council's published admission figures. Headteacher Steve Kenning said pupil numbers in the feeder primary schools were bigger than ever before and the school wanted to be able to cater for those pupils when they reached 11. He said: 'We are not trying to take students away from other schools but we want people in our community to be able to go to school here. 'It seems silly that the county will have to pay for students to travel further to other schools.' It also means that siblings could be attending different schools. Mr Kenning said other parents had put down grammar schools in Plymouth as their first choice with Callington as their second — therefore the demand for education at the college could be even greater if the first choice failed. 'As a foundation school we are aware of admission numbers this year, before we did not know if we were oversubscribed or not,' he added. 'We have talked to the county council about trying to expand the intake but because of the law and protocols we are not able to — there is no flexibility. Now parents who are not happy about being given another school will have to go through the appeal procedure which costs money and time. It seems unnecessary when we would be happy to take their children.' Chairman of Governors at Callington College Peter Lee said he believed there were some schools in East and North Cornwall which were undersubscribed and the county council wanted to smooth out the numbers: 'The law says that parents should have the choice of where their children go to school,' said Mr Lee, who added that local families should not have to suffer the inconvenience of taking their children to school 10- 20 miles away. A spokeswoman for the county council said the authority had a legal duty to offer places in line with the published admission figures. County councillor Godfrey Smale said he was taking the matter up with the admissions officer at the county council. He said it would have been safer for the college to put in a higher figure at the time of the last review on admission figures: 'They may not have reached this figure but at least there would have been room for manoeuvre,' he said. 'There have been improvements at the school and it has been promoting itself so you have to expect more people want to come but little can be done now because of the restrictive numbers laid down by the education act. 'The only way around it is to make a special case and it would have to be a strong one. The school has this new foundation status and has children coming in from all the new housing which is what the Government wants so that might work in its favour. This restriction may have been OK 10 years ago but not now.' A spokesman from the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) confirmed that the application by the college for an 'in-year variation order' was currently being considered by the school's adjudicator. 'The admission numbers are set 18 months in advance of the term they apply to,' he said. 'There seems to be a difference between demand and supply in this case but schools cannot just up the numbers. There is a process that has to be followed and the case is currently being considered.' He said the aim was to turn around the applications in six weeks but while some took less, some took a lot longer depending on how complicated they were.
