A NEW school estimated to cost just over £1m at Middleton Tyas has been declared a priority by North Yorkshire councillors.

The council executive agreed on Tuesday that the £1.1m project should head a list of primary education improvements which will be paid for out of new school modernisation funds being released to local authorities by the Government next month.

Other local schools will get new halls, temporary prefabricated classrooms will be replaced and extensions and adaptations will be undertaken.

Nominating Middleton Tyas as the priority for a new school, director of education, Cynthia Welbourn, told the council executive: "The mezzanine provided a couple of years ago has provided sufficient teaching bases for current needs, although not solving the key problem of the lack of a hall and site area, with absolutely no potential for any further development on the site.

"With numbers now in the nineties and forecast to exceed 100 in the very near future, there is no prospect of creating any extra class space on this site. The county council already owns a site for a new school."

The executive also agreed that a scheme for maintenance and modernisation at Melsonby which would eventually replace a dining hut at the far end of the village, should figure in a package of upgrading measures across the county costing about £785,000.

The village school at Barton is in line for a new hall in a countywide programme for such buildings costing an estimated £1m