SCORES of parents joined forces last night to air their concerns over one of Southampton’s newest schools to city MP John Denham.

Parents of pupils at Oasis Academy Mayfield attended a private meeting at St Mark’s Institute in Woolston to speak directly to the Southampton Itchen MP about the standard of education at the school, which has had pupil riots and faced claims of poor teaching since it opened in September.

“More than 100 people were inside with only one thing on their minds – the education of their children,” said Scout leader Marie Slade, who withdrew two sons from the school.

“There are parents who have children previously expected to get grades A and B and are now getting grades C.”

Mrs Slade, 40, said parents at the meeting were not concerned with issues regarding the merger of Woolston and Grove Park schools, which formed Oasis Academy Mayfield, and it was the lack of education that everyone agreed was the problem at the school.

The Daily Echo was asked not to attend the private meeting, and parents who did go to meet the Labour MP in the hall in Victoria Road were asked not to speak to the press about what had been discussed.

After the meeting, another parent said: “It has nothing to do with the merger. We only care about the standard of teaching and what is best for our children. That is something we are all agreed on and why we are all here.

“It was a good meeting and hopefully something will be done soon,” she added.

Mr Denham, who previously described Oasis as a “very inexperienced organisation”, is expected to meet the head teacher Ruth Johnson in the next few days.

Speaking after meeting with parents, he said: “It was a private meeting for me to speak to parents and hear their concerns. I now have more meetings to come.”

The school is one of two new Oasis academies in Southampton as part of a major shake-up of secondary education.

A spokesman for Oasis said there were now “no timetabling issues” and that discipline at the academies is governed by a behaviour policy “based upon the mutual respect of the whole academy community.”