PLANS for 12 new high school classrooms passed Blackpool planners' tests with full marks on Monday (September 27).

Collegiate High School's new classroom scheme won approval from the resort's development control committee - part of a £5m expansion at four schools to cope with a 1,000-strong increase in pupil numbers over the next three years.

Due to open next September, Collegiate's extension - designed for English, modern languages and information technology - will allow the 1,200-pupil school to add some 250 extra children over the next five years.

Deputy head Dr John Lea said: "Ourselves, Highfield, Montgomery and Palatine high schools are all expanding to cope with a huge growth in the pupil-population over the next five years.

"We are up to capacity at Collegiate at the moment, with class-sizes averaging 24 or 25 - we don't want to increase class-sizes and neither does Blackpool education authority."

Education executive Coun Eddie Collett said: "We've tried to spread the expansion across the town at schools parents already want their children to attend, rather than building a whole new high school, which would have been much more costly."

Collegiate already has building work under way - on a new sports hall which will be available to the community in non-school hours.

The hall, part of a pioneering public-private partnership, will accommodate basketball, tennis, five-a-side football, netball or badminton in the main hall, with a gym for aerobics, dance or drama alongside.

The scheme is funded partly by private company Uforia (£450,000), with the rest paid for by the Department of Education (£750,000). It also includes eight all-weather pitches which opened in August and are already in heavy demand from local teams.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.