A MOTHER from South Oxhey believes her son has been let down by an education system which, she claimed this week, has failed to meet his academic needs.

Miss Sharon Folich's 11-year-old son, Cory McNally, is said to be a talented young footballer, and has a two-year schoolboy contract with Luton Town Football Club's under-12 team.

Cory's dreams of becoming a professional football player will be dashed if he doesn't go to a school which can support his sporting ambitions, according to his mother.

Despite numerous set backs, Miss Folich, 43, of Prestwick Road, vowed she would continue to fight the system and ensure her son has the opportunities to which, she believes, he is entitled.

She said: 'He has got his foot on the first rung of the ladder but now it depends on what school he goes to.'

Having identified three suitable schools during the secondary transfer process last year, Miss Folich's son was not accepted at any of them, despite achieving top marks in his standard assessment tests (SATs) earlier this year.

This, she argued, was proof of the 'discrimination' suffered by South Oxhey's children, who are geographically situated furthest away from the majority of south west Hertfordshire's schools.

Mrs Folich had refused to accept a place allocated to her son at a school in Watford - not one of her three choices.

Instead, she is continuing to lobby Hertfordshire County Council - the local education authority - in an effort to win its support to send her son to Whitefield School in Barnet.

The school is one of only a handful across the country to have been given sports college status by the Government, in recognition of its commitment to sport.

Having secured a place, Mrs Folich, a working, single mother, is unable to fund the £40-a-week travelling expenses. Instead, she has sought assistance from the county council, which has refused to pay.

A spokesman for the council said: 'Mrs Folich's son doesn't qualify for assisted travel under our current home-to-school transport policy.

'We do give help if it is the nearest available school but it isn't. But we are investigating this individual case and seeing if other sources of funding can be identified.'

If funding cannot be found, Mrs Folich has refused to send her son to his allocated school.

She said: 'I think the school should be suitable for the child and, if I cannot get funding to get him to Barnet, September will come and he won't have a school to go to.'