The parents of a four-year-old face an almost 100-mile round trip after ticking the wrong box while applying for primary schools.

K’leigh Allman, who lives on the Isle of Sheppey, admits she made a mistake but believes Kent County Council (KCC) could have communicated with her better to ensure her child secured an appropriate school place.

Her son Bobby is a nursery pupil at Queenborough School and Nursery, which is less than a mile away from their home in Rushenden, so when applying for schools this was the family’s first choice.

Her second choice was to send him to the next school over, Minster-in-Sheppey Community Primary School, which would have been about a 10-minute drive.

But when the allocations came through in April she realised the school had instead been listed as Minster Church of England Primary School, in Minster, Ramsgate, – 42.2 miles away and a 51-minute drive with no traffic.

And this was where Bobby had been allocated a place.

K’leigh, of Alsager Avenue, said: “I was mortified when I found out. We are talking about a small child, I was so upset.

“I did not expect to have this much difficulty to get my child into primary school.

“I am going to put him into a school but I am not just going to take him anywhere, like Ramsgate.

“He is missing out on starting school, it is a big thing for four-year-olds. He is now going to still be in nursery when everyone else has moved up.”

And although the admin worker admits she was the one to make the mistake, she believes the council could have made more effort to contact her to resolve it, such as picking up a phone.

The authority did send the family an email to check the application was correct but it went to their junk mail.

A spokesman for KCC said: “The process for applying for a primary school place is fairly simple and straightforward.

“Parents and carers are strongly advised to complete the application by specifying all their preferred schools and checking to ensure it is accurate.

“Despite KCC’s best efforts, it is clearly not possible to allocate first preferences for every child, however, over 90% of applicants did receive their highest preference this year.

“Distance from school is one of the criteria, but there are others and each school outlines its admission criteria on the relevant websites.

”KCC does routinely check for parents that may have accidentally selected similarly named schools that are some distance from their home and all cases including this one were sent an email to query whether or not the selection was accurate.

“Parents are advised to white-list KCC email addresses to ensure vital emails such as this one are received.

”KCC does not know the individual circumstances of each family and has no authority to change a parent’s preferences without explicit confirmation from them that the preference selection was a mistake.

“Similarly, KCC cannot dedicate an unlimited resources to correcting potential mistakes as around 45,000 applications are made each year.

”KCC cannot be responsible if these exceptional and non-mandatory additional checks do not result in parents correcting the mistake they have made in their application.”

The family has been advised to continue to apply for places at other primary schools and to lodge an appeal.

KCC member Mike Whiting (Con), said: “I have every sympathy for the family. On the face of it, this is one of the worse placements I have seen; sending a young child on a 100-mile round trip.

“With the number of new homes applications being approved, it is vital that we see more developer contributions to pay for more local school places.

“Building new homes where there are not enough places in schools is doing it the wrong way round. We need investment in those school places first, before the homes are built.

“It is so frustrating for families who cannot get into the nearest school. It makes sense for them, it makes sense for the environment not to have to be driven miles to school, and it makes sense for the child who may attend pre-school clubs or after-school activities.

“Unfortunately, while distance from school remains the last criteria applied by many schools when they are oversubscribed we will continue to see families losing out on a place at their local school, sometimes by a matter of yards.”

Bobby has been put on the waiting list for the primary school in Queenborough.