500 are waiting: what chance do we stand?

Jenny Iliff's son, Joseph, 10, was looking forward to going to his local secondary school just a few blocks away from the family home in Streatham Hill.

But now he could be travelling to Putney because, following his parents' application to six schools in the Lambeth area, he was not given a place at any of them.

Ms Iliff, 40, has called Lambeth council several times but has failed to get through. Her son is on the waiting list with the LEA and with the local school.

She is waiting on the response of the LEA before she makes an appeal but claims this route has been discouraged by a school Ms Iliff wanted to apply to.

The mother-of-three said: "When you see 561 children (in Lambeth) without places it makes you think: where are they going to fit all those children in?"

When her son did not get his choices, Ms Iliff was calm at first but she became more and more concerned. Joseph is equally upset.

She said: "There are so many children who have not got a place. At a school down the road, there were 13 children in one class that did not have a place. It was at least a third."

The 10-year-old has been put on the reserve list for three schools in the area but Mrs Chesson, 42, said her daughter is way down the priority on these lists.

She said: "The education system is an absolute joke and Tony Blair has a lot to answer for.

He promised 'education, education, education', but it is just not true. I will fight for my daughter to get a place."

Abigail is the only girl in her class not to have a place at a local secondary school and faces leaving her friends.

Mrs Chesson said: "Why offer people choices when they cannot give them?

"How do you explain this to your child when all their friends have places and they don't?"

Mrs Chesson now has to go through the appeals process through the LEA to find her daughter a school.