PARENTS at a school in Somerset are becoming 'more and more desperate' to get their children into full-time education.

Abbots Way School in Meare currently accommodates 15 pupils, but is unable to increase their capacity due to a traffic and driveway issue.

Some pupils attend the school part-time, whereas some are unable to attend at all.

READ MORE: Children cannot attend school due to planning issues at Abbots Way, Meare

Gareth Wright, joint headteacher of the school, has said their planning application to resolve this issue is 'in the very final stages prior to submission' and he is hoping this will mean the schools capacity will be able to increase by January 2022.

A Somerset County Council spokesperson said: "We are doing everything we can to work with the school and to offer additional support and advice on ensuring measures are in place and key planning requirements are met in the school's application to increase provision. "

As well as the planning application, the school has applied for a material change to also use another premises which is near to the school.

"We have applied for a separate material change to attain the use of additional premises locally to the school which will be a positive addition to our pioneering, holistic provision for the future," said Gareth.

"Moreover, this will facilitate the extension of our capacity so that those students currently named to attend Abbot's Way School and are at this moment unable to due to our parking arrangements can start as soon as possible.

"We hope this phase will be achieved imminently."

However, Ofsted inspected the extra premises and said it could not be used due to safety concerns.

Although these issues have been resolved, the school cannot accommodate the pupils until Ofsted re-inspect the premises.

A spokesperson for Ofsted added: "We carry out inspections of independent schools at the behest of the Department for Education (DfE), which is the registration authority for this type of school.

"We were asked to carry out a material change inspection at the additional premises in August and published our findings this week.

"Our inspector found significant concerns about the safety of the site, set out in the report, which meant that we could not say the school was likely to meet the independent school standards if the new premises were used.

"While the school may have resolved these issues now, we can only judge whether the standards are likely to be met when we are able to carry out another inspection."

Jessica Scott, a parent at the school, whose son cannot yet attend Abbots Way, says she gets 'more and more desperate' for a resolution each day.

"It would be a simple inspection and should be a priority - these are children affected considerably more by the pandemic than other children and are being denied an education due to this highly administrative repetitive process," she said.

"As parents we have been in touch with Ofsted but have not had a reply and each day that goes by is more and more desperate - I am trying to work at the same time and have no other childcare available to me."

Abbots Way is a specialist school for children with specific learning differences, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and co-occurring conditions such as developmental language disorder and visual processing issues.