PUPILS are sending a Save Our Schools appeal to councillors who are expected to vote tomorrow to approve the closure of three comprehensive schools.

Jason Charlton, 14, and his classmates have collected 600 names for a petition calling on Middlesbrough's education authority to keep the town's Langbaurgh School open.

Langbaurgh and its neighbours Keldholme and St Anthony's are scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a city academy.

The youngsters spent every free minute after school and at weekends for two weeks gathering signatures.

Jason said: "It will affect our year group because it will all happen as we go into Year 11 and GCSEs, and I think it will have an effect on other year groups as well.

"My family is worried about how what is happening will affect my exams.

"We went around the shops with the petition, into the school, and around families and friends."

Chairman of the governors Ian Bruce said: "I have nothing but admiration for Jason and the rest of them.

"Certainly, pupils want to come to Langbaurgh School and want Langbaurgh School to stay open.''

Middlesbrough Borough Council says it is proposing to address "serious, long-standing and continuing problems of under-achievement at the schools.'' But Chris Griffiths, headteacher at St Anthony's, said: "First of all, this is totally and utterly incorrect and is just dirty tricks. We have two Ofsted reports which say we are an improving school, not under-achieving.

"Secondly, they have no information about individual pupils to be able to say whether a pupil is under-achieving or not, never mind the school.

"We have gone from 9.4 per cent achieving five or more A to C grades, to 19.4 per cent."