Schools in Ashington are likely to be the first to close

A council is preparing a big schools closure programme in an effort to rid more than 7,000 spare pupil places.

Northumberland County Council commissioned a review of its education provision in September 2001.

It urged council bosses to take "strategic steps" to resolve the issue, which is costing the authority tens of thousands of pounds a year.

Now three schools in the Ashington area of the county look like being the first to close.

Ashington schools alone have more than 1,140 unfilled school places.

The council says Linton First School, Coulson Park First School and Alexandra Middle School are now "under review".

Education chiefs say Linton First School has a minimum capacity for 40 pupils, with only 23 pupils on its roll. Its old buildings are in poor state of repair with a backlog of repairs estimated at more than �170,000.

It seems that central government is deaf to our reasoned argument for better funding Jim Wright, Northumberland County Council

They say it costs �5,000 to keep each pupil in the school.

Coulson Park First School has 190 pupils in attendance despite having spaces for 240 youngsters. It has a waiting repair bill of �250,000.

Alexandra Middle School has a pupil capacity of 266, with only 204 on roll and a repair bill of �225,000.

Dr Lindsey Davies, Northumberland's director of education, said: "The council has a duty to provide sufficient school places for every child.

"But Northumberland continues to maintain one of the highest levels of surplus places in the country, with wide differences across the county.

"We have a large number of schools relative to the total school population and in consequence the cost of operating the school network is disproportionately high."

Jim Wright, the council's executive member for children's services added: "Here in Northumberland we have a commitment to education and lifelong learning.

'Scarce resources'

"We also have a duty to every council tax paying resident and every child in Northumberland to develop a strategy to address the surplus places in our schools and the consequent drain on our limited funds.

"As a local education authority we struggle for resources and some headteachers even talk about possible teacher redundancies to balance their books.

"In addition it seems that central government is deaf to our reasoned argument for better funding.

"We must therefore address over-capacity, free-up funds and carefully target our scarce resources for the educational benefit of every pupil in the county.

"Our task begins in Ashington and we then plan to roll out the programme across the county."

The council has already proposed using �1.5m in reserve funds to stave off almost 20 teacher job losses.