THURROCK is in more than a bit of a pickle where school places are concerned.

Parents will be fretting as there are simply not enough places to go around.

Estimates by the education trust are not good either. It is now predicted that even if every school in the borough admits their full pupil admission number for later this year, there will be a minimum shortfall of 244 children.

Quite a predicament.

In desperation to allviate the problem Thurrock Council last week approved the go-ahead for a rugby club to be transformed into a temporary school, providing an additional 120 places by September. Again this is far from ideal.

Construction on the planned new Orsett Heath Academy, which will create an extra 1,200 pupil places, can’t come soon enough, but work won’t start until the autumn, and doors won’t open before September 2021.

But the problem is here and now.

So the way forward, for the time being, might be in offers like the one which has come from St Edward’s Academy in Romford.

Bosses there are opening their doors to the borough’s children – and are even talking about laying on buses to ferry youngsters to and from Thurrock.

Credit to the school for speaking up.

It’s offers like this which may be the only way to ride out the schools’ places crisis Thurrock finds itself in.