Children in High Wycombe have missed the first six weeks of term after their parents refused to send them to a school that Ofsted said was ‘inadequate’.

Families declined Buckinghamshire Council’s offer of a place at Sir William Ramsay School in Hazlemere due to it previously having issues with bullying and harassment.

With other local schools now full, the parents are now educating their children at home and claim that the council has been unhelpful in finding them a school place.

However, the unitary authority claims that it is fulfilling its statutory duties in allocating school places and that there are other options for the children ‘across Buckinghamshire’.

Kerrie Pettet, 39, from Wycombe, said her decision not to send her daughter to Sir William Ramsay was influenced by its Ofsted rating and by the council telling her that she would not be eligible for free school transport to the academy.

The single mum, who works at a hairdresser’s, is on the waiting list for several schools but has been told she is only as high as 15th in the queue for one of them – and even lower for the others.

She told the Bucks Free Press: “So, technically I have got to wait for 15 children to leave one school to get a school place, which is never going to happen.

“So, where do I stand now? I don’t have a school place. I am just stuck.”

The frustrated parent appealed to the council’s school admissions panel, which told her that the Princes Risborough School had failed to comply with the school admissions code over an outdated policy.

However, the panel told Kerrie that her appeal was unsuccessful, noting that she lived a mile outside of the catchment area.

It said that her daughter’s admission into year 7 could put additional pressure on the cohort of 180 pupils, which it said contained four ‘looked after’ children, eight with education health care plans (EHCPs) and 48 with identified special educational needs (SEN).

Kerrie claimed the council had ‘not helped her at all’ with finding a school place and that she felt ‘blamed’ for not accepting the offer she was given.

She said: “The joke of it is that if my child was at a school and I hadn’t been taking her there, I probably would have got a fine by now.”

Another parent, James Coker, who also refused a place at Sir William Ramsay, is in a similar position to Kerrie, and is now homeschooling his daughter.

He told the Free Press: “Buckinghamshire Council, you send them an email and it takes them 15 days to get back to you. Ridiculous.”

The 47-year-old, who works in marketing and events, said that homeschooling his daughter had been an isolating experience once he had informed the council that he would not be accepting a place at Sir William Ramsay.

He said: “They leave you alone. You don’t get any guidance or anything. You are just left.”

Meanwhile, Kerrie said she was ‘juggling’ her daughter’s education alongside work and had been relying on friends who work from home, as well as the BBC Bitesize website to try and ensure her daughter keeps up but with the curriculum, especially English, science and maths.

But Kerrie said her daughter was ‘not coping very well socially, being stuck at home’ and that she, as a busy working mum, was also finding the situation difficult.

She said: “It is so stressful. I just don’t know what more I can do. It is just getting beyond stupid. I just feel like I am being pushed from pillar to post.”

Anita Cranmer, the council’s cabinet member for education and children’s services, claimed that every child in Buckinghamshire had been offered a school place this year, but that in a small minority of cases, this place may not have been at the ‘preferred school’.

She told the Free Press: “If the parents decline the offered place, then they would need to consider other schools for a suitable alternative place.

“Many schools in the area accept in-year applications directly to the school. Currently, there are still school places available in other state schools across the county.”

The cabinet member said the council always fulfilled its statutory responsibility to make an allocation for each child to an appropriate school.

She added: “While parents of course consider Ofsted gradings when considering preferences, for us it is not a factor in allocations according to statutory guidance.

“Our concern is always the wellbeing of the child who will, in most cases, do well in a school setting arranged in a timely manner.”

Ofsted inspectors said last year that Sir William Ramsay was improving how it tackled bullying and other issues following its damning 2022 inspection, but that there was still more work to do.

The school has been approached for comment.