A 12-year-old girl who is barred from a school bus because of her religion is set to launch a landmark legal challenge.

Toni Sheavills attends St Bede's Roman Catholic Comprehensive School in Peterlee, County Durham.

Her parents have to fork out £1.60 a day for transport to school because the youngster isn't a Roman Catholic and therefore cannot use the school bus.

Now they are set to challenge the ruling saying she is the victim of discrimination.

Toni's case could be the first legal challenge in the country to be brought against a local education authority by the National Secular Society.

The NSS claims thousands of youngsters across the UK are being discriminated against by LEAs on religious grounds.

Officials plan launch legal challenges on behalf of non-Catholics such as Toni, who attend church schools but are denied concessionary travel, and children who want to attend a non-denominational community school, rather than their nearest church secondary.

Last night the organisation said the bid to make Durham LEA change it's mind would be "a ground-breaking judgement which could have national ramifications."

Officials plan to write to education chiefs but say they will seek to bring the matter to court if the LEA does not back down over the seven mile bus trip from Toni's home in Wheatley Hill, County Durham.

Durham County Council insisted it was doing nothing wrong and was merely following guidelines laid out in the 1996 Education Act.

Spokesman Fraser Davey said the council had spent £12m on school transport this year and was carrying out its obligations to provide free travel to the "nearest appropriate and suitable school".

He said: "We provide free school transport to children who live more than two miles away from their nearest suitable and appropriate school.

"Toni's parents are choosing St Bede's for their own reasons though there are other closer schools available, so their children are not eligible for free travel."

But Ann Collingwood, Toni's mother, said the decision was "religious discrimination".

Keith Porteous Wood, NSS executive director, said: "The law, which predates the Human Rights Act, provides free transport for, say, Roman Catholic children to travel to a distant RC school, but not for the non-religious child to go to a distant community school."

A spokesperson for the Department for Education and Skills said: "LEAs do not have a duty to provide free transport for pupils whose parents have chosen to send them to any school other than the nearest suitable one."