KIRKLEES planners and councillors are insisting that Castle Hall School can be closed and its pupils relocated at Mirfield Free Grammar, a mile away.
With 900 pupils presently at Castle Hall and 1,050 at Mirfield Free Grammar, the projection that by 2013 only 1,500 11-16-year-old places will be needed in the Mirfield/Ravensthorpe catchment area sounds a little stretched.
This is a 50% drop in the high school age population.
This is at a time when you can’t get a place in a Mirfield nursery school unless you book it the moment you find out you’re pregnant.
What makes the calculation even odder is that the Local Development Framework for the area shows plans for between 1,100 and 1,400 new homes in Mirfield by 2013. It’s inconceivable such a large number of new homes will have no 11-16-year-old residents.
Perhaps Kirklees Council planners should be first to enrol at the super-school. It certainly looks as though they’re in need of a maths lesson.
