TOWN hall bosses have agreed to spend £2.9 million to expand a failing primary school by more than 200 places.

Oldham’s cabinet voted in favour of allocating "basic need funding" for expansion at Clarksfield Primary School, increasing it to 630 available pupil places.

The Grasmere Road school – which was branded "inadequate" and put into special measures by Ofsted in 2017 – is due to convert to academy status this year, with academy chain Oasis in line to become its new sponsor.

Government policy states that only good or outstanding rated schools should be expanded, except in "exceptional circumstances".

However, once Clarksfield becomes an academy, it will no longer carry an Ofsted rating and "presents an opportunity" to expand the school and provide "much needed additional provision" in the east Oldham area, a report by head of school support services Andy Collinge states.

He adds that officers in the authority’s education department are "confident" that the new sponsors will build upon the "substantial improvements" overseen by the "interim executive board", which replaced the existing governing body after the education watchdog’s damming inspection.

Council leader Sean Fielding told the meeting it was a demonstration of the "good relationships" that they have with schools and academies outside of council control.

“Clearly we do have a responsibility to see that there are adequate school places in Oldham for the children that live here,” he said.

“A lot of them are now independent of local authority control either by the virtue of being academies or free schools.

“I think for us to create the places that we need, with effectively one hand tied behind our back because we’re not allowed as a council to open a new school because of the restrictions that are placed on us by the government, I think what we’ve managed to do here is a testament to how strong that is and what we can achieve through partnership working and how important that is, not just in education, but in a lot of other areas of council work.

“We’ll have to continue because we’ve still got pressure on school places and we’ll have to do a lot more of this because unfortunately we are not allowed to just open schools as a council anymore which is a huge frustration.

“But we’re now going to have more primary school places as required.”

There is a forecasted shortfall of school places in east Oldham from this September, with the town hall legally obliged to provide an additional two forms of entry in the area by 2020.

Clarksfield is in an area with a "significant demand" for places, and serves a mainly Muslim community, the report adds.

The expansion will be financed using the council’s basic need grant allocation which totals £48m over four years, and was handed to them by government to ensure they supply enough school places.

Other schools were considered for expansion, including Littlemoor Community Primary school, St Thomas Moorfield, and Woodlands Academy, but each of these would have cost £3m.

Adding more places to Mayfield Academy and St Anne’s RC school would have cost £4 million and £5 million, respectively.

Helen Lockwood, executive director economy, skills and neighbourhoods, added that ensuring adequate school places is a "key priority for the council" and this proposal was the culmination of "detailed consultation, detailed work with the school and with the proposed sponsor".