THERE has been a lack of creative thinking to help pupils who missed out on all three secondary school selections, parents have said.

Brighton and Hove City Council has been accused of “sacrificing” an academic year of children who are being offered no viable solution to missing out on their preferred schools.

A petition of more than 1,400 signatures was handed to the council on Thursday calling on the authority to commit to place all children into a catchment area school.

Almost 150 pupils in the city missed out on their three preferences including 57 from the Varndean/Dorothy Stringer catchment.

The council heard that 13 of the so-called “misplaced 57” had now been allocated one of their three preferences but parents of the remaining children fear there will be no reprieve for them.

Parent Anoushka Visvalingam said: “There has not been any creative solutions to our problem.

“They have been able to do something for children in the years before and they hope to have the problem solved by next year but it just feels like our children have been sacrificed.

“Doing something in the future is no comfort to our children.”

Another parent Martin Dorminy said: “We still have very real concerns, we do not feel like our plight has been taken seriously enough.”

Councillor Alex Philips, Green spokeswoman for children, said the Labour administration had offered “no creative solutions” to a problem officers had known was coming.

She said: “There are many more affected children this year than ever before, this is unprecedented.

“This is not good enough, this is not getting the basics right.

“The administration needs to listen and act now, they must not let this chaos be repeated again.”

Councillor Daniel Chapman, children’s committee chairman, said the demand in catchment areas only became fully known in January after the preferential selections for Cardinal Newman and King’s School had been made available.

He said: “We can only offer to provide a school place in the city, not in a catchment.

“Parents have been told before but maybe this was not made clear enough and communications could have been better. In previous years pupils without places have been allocated within the catchment area though that number was much smaller.

“Expanding [Varndean/Dorothy Stringer] any further would put pressure on day-to-day operations in school canteen, corridors and playing fields.”

Councillor Vanessa Brown, Conservative children spokeswoman, said the parents had her “utmost sympathy”. She said: “The catchment area worked well for years.

“As a matter of urgency, a citywide catchment review needs to be completed to avoid putting parents through same again.”