MANY anxious parents appealing over secondary school places for their children could face long delays before finding out if they are successful.

County education chiefs say a recruitment drive designed to encourage more lay people to sit on independent appeals panels succeeded in attracting just two applicants.

As a result, KCC is likely to rely on its existing single independent panel to hear several hundred appeals.

Initial indications suggest many more parents are planning to go down that route this year. KCC says it has already received requests for appeals from some 500 parents – double the number it dealt with last year.

Up to 1,000 appeals could be lodged by the deadline of March 22, according to the county council.

But while the numbers appealing have soared, the education authority says it has been unable to attract volunteers to set up additional panels. KCC had hoped enough people would come to set up several more panels.

As things stand, it will have to rely on just one panel to hear appeals to KCC schools. Foundation and voluntary aided schools manage their own appeals panels.

KCC has also disclosed it was swamped with nearly 4,000 telephone calls from worried parents last week and has been forced to draft in more staff to deal with them.

Cllr Leyland Ridings, cabinet member for schools organisation, said: “We have had some difficulty in attempting to recruit the numbers of people we need to sort out various situations before children start school in September. We have a very complex system to administer and an enormous logistical problem to resolve.”

Under a scheme set by education secretary Charles Clarke, KCC is acting as the clearing house for applications and will be re-allocating places as and when they become available.

Under the scheme, parents are not supposed to be allowed to change their minds if they have been offered their first choice of school.

However, there are around 400 parents whose children have passed the 11-plus but who opted to nominate a non-selective school first, who are now expected to use the appeals panel to secure a grammar place.

That in turn could cause problems further down the chain although it will free up some places, mainly at popular high schools. What is unknown is how this will affect other schools down the chain and the timing of their own appeals panels.

Opposition Labour spokesman Cllr Matt Wheatcroft said the scheme was fairer than before. He stressed: “There is no such thing as a system which will work for the whole of Kent. The fact that there are only a few hundred reallocations out of 18,000 is something of a success.”