A ruling in the High Court has allowed Leeds education authority to go ahead with plans to close Middleton Park High School, which this year came bottom of the exam league with no pupils achieving five GCSEs.

A 14-year-old pupil at the school asked the High Court for permission to challenge the closure, on the grounds that Middleton Park was "potentially a wonderful school".

While the exam performance was the worst in England, the school was described to the court as having excellent facilities and a particularly good provision for children with special needs.

Once the number of pupils with special needs and the deprivation of the local area were taken into account, the court heard that the school was performing much better than the league table suggested.

However the local authority told the court that the school was in "grave difficulties and running up a vrey considerable deficit".

The council said that pupil numbers had fallen from 750 to 450 and the school was �346,000 in deficit, a figure which would continue to rise until the education authority was allowed to close Middleton Park and begin to re-allocate pupils.