Ulster Unionist MLA Alan Chambers has written to the Education Department demanding to know why Bangor Academy is still being refused a temporary variation in its enrolment number, resulting in dozens of local pupils facing the prospect of up to hour long journeys to other schools. The North Down MLA has also said that the situation may have been avoided had there been an Education Minister in place.

Alan Chambers said:

“Over the weekend local parents received notification of which post primary school could offer their child a place for the incoming academic year.

“Almost forty families have discovered that there will not be a place available for their child in the local Bangor Academy, and instead options were offered as far afield as Portaferry and Castlereagh in Belfast.

“Two other schools in North Down, St Columbanus and Strangford College, were granted temporary variations on their intake figures but an application for an extension by Bangor Academy was again rejected by the Department of Education.

“This is a totally unreasonable and intolerable position to be placing so many local schoolchildren in. There is a great sense of disappointment and concern across all of the families affected, and as if the transfer from primary to post primary was not already challenging enough this latest announcement is just heaping on further pressure.

“Over 40 local children are going to be separated from their primary school friends who have been allocated a place in the Academy while their parents now have to start thinking about how they and their child deal with excessive travel over coming years to complete their post primary education in unfamiliar surroundings.

“While I welcome the grant of a variation to the other two schools I find the decision not to grant Bangor Academy a similar dispensation inexplicable. It smacks of inequality and will be seen as such by those families who have had an expectation of a place for their child in the Academy taken from them.

“I have written to the Permanent Secretary in the Department of Education asking for an urgent meeting to seek reasons why the Academy was not granted a variation and to lobby for them to receive the same treatment as the other two schools. It is hugely frustrating that if we had an Education Minister in place there is a possibility that all of this distress could have been avoided."