THE chairman of Skipton Girls' High School's governors has called for the school to be rebuilt on a new site.

John Goodfellow, who is also chief executive of Skipton Building Society, told the audience at the school's annual speech day that a new school was the "correct answer" in the medium term for overcrowding problems the school was encountering.

"The staff are working with an 1890s building trying to deliver a 21st century curriculum," he said.

"The constant cost of maintenance coupled with a lack of facilities for PE, a hall not large enough, lack of proper dining facilities, means that the current site represents inefficient use of public funds and inefficient use of our most valuable asset, our staff."

Mr Goodfellow expanded upon his comments this week and told the Craven Herald that he had decided to use the speech night to flag up a problem which was not going to go away.

He pointed out that by the time this year's intake finished sixth form, the school population would have increased to more than 1,000 pupils, but there was no possibility of expanding on the existing site.

The school's problems began when the town's Ermysted's Grammar School decided to increase its intake by 25 pupils a year. The Girls' High was forced to follow suit after being instructed that not to do so could be interpreted as "sex discrimination".

However, the school has no room to expand on its current Gargrave Road site - already it has to use former residential buildings across the road with the attendant problems of road safety.

The school hall is not big enough for the full roll, meaning assemblies have to be staggered, wasting time and causing disruption.

"There is only so much you can do and we have done it," said Mr Goodfellow. "In an ideal world you would flatten the school and rebuild it, but it is still not big enough. There is no future for the school where it is."

Mr Goodfellow said the topic would be discussed at the next governors' meeting, but he had no alternative site in mind and there was no "road map" to achieve a new school.

He thought the first step would be informal discussions with the local education authority and the Learning and Skills Council, which now has responsibility for sixth form funding, to discuss the problem.

Mr Goodfellow said he expected the first response to be that there was not any money, but he pointed out that the school had considerable value for alternative use and that could be a starting point for discussion.