TERM started weeks ago for thousands of Southampton and Hampshire youngsters – but the parents of 75 children are still fighting to get them a place at school.

Fears have been raised that the lengthy delay is already damaging the children’s education, but some angry parents in Southampton have been told it will be at least another month before their applications are processed.

A Daily Echo investigation reveals the number still without a place at primary school is almost double the number this time last year, when 40 city families were left without spots for their little ones as the council struggled to cope with increased demand.

Hampshire County Council said all its applications have seen children successfully given places at schools.

But rising birth rates and numbers of people coming to Southampton to live have left classes across the city bursting at the seams.

Southampton City Council is already in the middle of a major scheme to add 3,000 new places at 20 primary schools around the city.

Some are increasing the number of classes they have, while some infant and junior schools are becoming primaries to take youngsters through from four to 11 years..

Southampton education boss Councillor Jeremy Moulton said everything possible is being done to place the youngsters in schools as quickly as possible.

He said negotiations are ongoing with schools to add to their capacity, but these are complicated by the way funding is allocated for pupils, with no extra Government cash given for numbers going up mid-term.

Cllr Moulton said: “I’m sorry that there are still children in the city waiting for a school place to be allocated.

“Southampton has seen an unprecedented number of families who are new to the city applying in mid-August for school places this year.

“This is in addition to the applications we are continuing to receive from new residents such as visiting academics and post-graduate students from abroad as the city’s universities begin the new academic year.

“This has created pressures on places above and beyond what we had already planned for.

“The council is doing everything it can to remedy this and will continue to offer school places as quickly as possible.

We will find a place for every child who needs one.”

Case study: Dilworth family

THEY are losing out on the most critical time of their lives.

That is the view of the worried parents of five-year-old twins Lilly and Grace, and fouryear- old Rubie who have been told it will be at least another four weeks before their application for school places is processed.

Jamie and Laura Dilworth suddenly moved with their family – which also includes 11- week-old Alice – at the start of September, after an opportunity arose to move out of their temporary council accommodation.

But their new home in Bentley Green, Harefield, Southampton, is more than nine miles from the twins’ old school, Sinclair Primary in Lordshill.

As neither of the couple can drive, they say there is no way for them to take the girls back to that school.

Window fitter Jamie, 26, said he has been frustrated at the lack of urgency he and Laura, 23, have come up against in trying to find their children a new school.

Jamie said: “They’ve been off school for four weeks already, and we’ve been told there’s another four weeks at least before they’ll even process the application. That’s just really not good enough.

“They’re suffering. They’re losing out on the most critical time of their lives being at school.

“If we took them on holiday or out for a week we would be getting fined and told they have to be at school.

“The alternative they’ve given us is stupid, because they’ve said they should go back to Sinclair.

We’ve always liked that school because it’s brilliant, but it’s too hard to get to.

“We’ve asked for as much work as possible to be sent out to the kids so that we can teach them ourselves, but we’re obviously not teachers.

“We’ve really got stuck into it, but we’re noticing a change in them already.

They were going along really well, but they’re just going to go back and be totally behind.”