Karen Calladine with son Tom

An angry mum is having an appeal heard today after her son missed out on his first-choice school place... by 12 inches.

Karen Calladine said she will consider home-schooling Tom because he was not offered any of his three preferred choices of secondary school.

Mrs Calladine, of Honeyball Walk, Teynham, says the map used to calculate the distance was wrong.

Tom, 11, was beaten to the last place at Fulston Manor School by a child living 0.0002 miles closer.

His mother is appealing the decision at Kent County Council this afternoon. A decision is expected in around five days.

Mrs Calladine said: "KCC sent me the map showing the route they used and that's when I found out they'd taken a much longer route and added almost half a mile.

"There's a quite obvious road that you would use [going along Swanstree Avenue which now leads in to Brenchley Road] but they haven't used it at all.

"I'm arguing that they've added to the route and we are in the distance we should be but we're still not getting a place because of the route they've used."

Despite listing three preferred choices of secondary school Tom, who is currently a Year 6 pupil at Canterbury Road Primary School in Sittingbourne, failed to get into any of them.

Instead, he was offered a place at The Abbey School in Faversham, which is five miles away.

Mrs Calladine, a mum-of-four, added: "There's no way I'm sending him to another school out of town. I've also got a nine-year-old at Canterbury Road Primary School. How am I meant to get Tom and my nine-year-old to schools in different towns at the same time?

"If he doesn't get a place at Fulston Manor I'm going to have to home-school him because I've refused a place at the Abbey School."

Kent County Council earlier said it uses a straight-line distance measure in deciding school allocations.

It said it was looking into claims "there may have been an issue with the specific map used to calculate the walk-to-school distance".