AN EDUCATION chief has said sorry to parents after they had 'difficulties' finding out if their children had been allocated a school place.

Parents contacted the Bucks Free Press to complain they had not received an e-mail as expected on Tuesday at 5pm with the details.

Buckinghamshire County Council's website crashed, leaving mums, dads confused as to where their children would be going.

But council bosses say the problem was fixed overnight and working from Wednesday morning.

Cllr Steven Adams, Cabinet Member for Education, said: “We are sorry for the inconvenience this will have caused and we do appreciate how frustrating this has been for the families involved.

"We will be taking all the necessary steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

“Due to some unexpected problems with the County Council’s website, parents who applied online for their child’s secondary school place experienced difficulties viewing the outcome of their application on the web portal yesterday evening, and may not have received an allocation email that evening.

“However, the problems were rectified overnight (Tuesday) and the web portal has been operational since yesterday morning.

"Allocation emails are gradually being sent out and offer letters were also posted first class Tuesday.”

He added: “The fantastic news for families in Buckinghamshire is that overall, 90 per cent of pupils were successful in obtaining a place at their first preference school, after 11+ qualification is taken into account.

"This is almost 4 per cent. higher than last year’s figure of 86.2 per cent.”