A SCHOOL may find itself with classes of only two or three pupils after parents admitted defeat in their fight to keep it open and have moved their children elsewhere.

St Francis School, in Whinney Banks, Middlesbrough, is due to close on December 29 because of falling class numbers.

The school is on an estate at the centre of a £52m regeneration plan and parents had vowed to fight to keep it open.

Denise Baxter, whose sons attend St Francis, said: "We chose the school because of its atmosphere and we had seen classrooms in neighbouring schools overflowing into the corridors.

"It is a good school, which produces solid, well-rounded, responsible young people, which is what I thought we wanted these days.

"In the end, it all just boils down to money."

Mrs Baxter and her husband have decided to enrol both boys at another school, where they will start in September.

"It goes against our better judgement, but our eldest son would be in a class of a mixed-age group if he went back after the holidays.

"A lot of other people are also moving their children in September and I have heard talk that classes may only have two or three children in them until the school closes," said Mrs Baxter.

"We are very upset about the whole thing. We feel as if it is done and dusted, and cut and dried.

"The local authority and Middlesbrough New Deal are ploughing thousands of pounds into the Whinney Banks area and talk about a rosy future, yet they insist on removing one of the staple parts of it."

A spokesman for Middlesbrough Council said the school has a capacity of just over 100, a number which is likely to continue to fall.

"We wouldn't be doing our job as a Local Education Authority if we didn't look at the available options for the future of the school," he said.

Father Derek Turnham, spokesman for the diocese of Middlesbrough, gave parents the assurance that the diocese would do its best to find places in other Catholic primary schools for every baptised pupil.