THE decision to admit an extra 27 children to a Swindon school will cause massive problems, says the chairman of governors.

John Booth, the chairman of the governors at Bridlewood Primary School, says Swindon Council's move to increase admission numbers at the school for this year's intake will result in overcrowding and traffic chaos and could affect teaching.

Councillors made the decision at a meeting of the Education Partnership Board in response to concerns among north Swindon parents that there weren't enough places to cater for children wanting to follow their siblings to the school.

But Mr Booth says the school is not big enough for the extra pupils.

"The school was built with a capacity for 210 children and is in the middle of a big housing development," he said.

"With the extra 27 children, by 2007 we will have an accommodation crisis so we will need to put a mobile classroom on the site and where that will go I don't know.

"There are proposals to build it on the edge of a field but we must take into consideration the safety of the children.

"There is a perimeter fence around the school but I don't know if we would be able to provide that for the mobile.

"By 2008 we will be 20 per cent over capacity and that will affect the health and safety of the children.

"We can't have 250 children in the playground at the same time it's not big enough to cope with it.

"This may also have a detrimental effect on the children's education we may have to have composite classes, for instance putting Years 3 and 4 together."

He agrees that more places need to be made available for north Swindon children, but that this is not necessarily the best solution.

"We are very sympathetic to the situation of admission numbers and we are unanimously in support of siblings being able to attend the same schools," he said.

"But if we have more pupils than space it will not be easy. We just feel the council is not considering the impact this could have."

Garry Perkins, the lead member for education at Swindon Council, said: "Increasing the number of places at Bridlewood School was the most sensible solution.

"I understand that initially the figures didn't add up. But more detailed work has been carried out on where the children would go and we would have had to provide transport for them to get to another school so the financial argument falls flat.

"The school has had a temporary classroom before.

"And with regard to the argument about health and safety the whole point of doing this is so that local children can go to local schools.

"If they have to go to schools that are further away that means more cars on the road. The argument was won in the end by the parents."

Diana Milne