A MOTHER is in despair after having to slash her working hours to ensure her 13-year-old son gets to school after being threatened with legal action.

David Ashcroft failed to secure a place at King Charles I High School, Kidderminster, less than a mile from his Hawfinch Rise home, despite moving from Tamworth, Staffordshire, at the start of the year especially to enrol there.

He was left without a school after his single mother Angela said she could not afford to send him across town to the only school which had a place for him - Baxter College.

The 13-year-old was not entitled to free transport as the shortest walking distance to the college was less than three miles, but his mother was upset as this route would involve a shortcut across Brinton Park on dark winter evenings.

Mrs Ashcroft, a shoe shop assistant, was keen for him to go to the same high school his brother, who is now grown up, had gone to.

She enrolled him at Comberton Middle School - in the King Charles pyramid - when they moved from Warwickshire at the start of the year.

But she was informed in March places had been allocated back in November last year.

She is fuming pupils from outside the King Charles catchment area have places there.

"He's very depressed about it all," she said.

"He moved here and he didn't know anyone but he's a popular lad and all his friends from Comberton Middle have gone to King Charles.

"I object to sending my son, who lives in the catchment area for King Charles, across town when they have pupils from all over town who could be going to Baxter College," she added.

"I was threatened with legal action unless I sent him there so I have had to cut my working hours from full-time to part-time to take him and pick him up - but I'm not sure how much longer my employers are going to tolerate it.

"Money was tight anyway but I'm earning even less now."

A county education spokesman had "sympathy" for the family's plight but confirmed the application had come too late.

A total of 35 applicants had been refused places at King Charles I for this term.

Fourteen of these had it listed as their first choice, and eight lived in the catchment area but applied too late.

Twenty-seven pupils enrolled at the school come from outside the catchment area, and nine of them have brothers or sisters there.