A PUPILS' plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair has failed to persuade his education chief to save their school.

A shake-up in Spennymoor means that North Road Junior and Bessemer Park Nursery and Infant schools will be replaced in 2002 by a single primary housed in adapted and extended buildings on the Bessemer Park site. At present the schools have 339 places for just 211 children.

The £1.34m merger approved by Education Secretary David Blunkett last week will save Durham County Council £130,000 a year.

Education director Keith Mitchell said there were a number of educational benefits from creating a school on a single site.

But North Road head Stephen Eltringham said his pupils and staff would be disappointed.

Earlier this year Sarah Ball, aged ten, and classmate Jade White called in at Number 10 on their way back from a school trip to Paris to deliver a petition calling for their 120-year-old school to be saved.

North Road's governors asked Mr Blunkett to send in an independent adjudicator to examine the case for keeping it open.

Mr Mitchell said: "The proposals would not have been agreed by the county council or the Education Secretary if they had been at the expense of the provision of quality education. At present money is being wasted on paying for empty places at these three schools - money which would be better spent on meeting the education needs of pupils actually attending schools in the area."

Mr Eltringham said: "We have done everything we have been asked to do and done it well.

"We are worried about the number of places that will be available because numbers are rising at both North Road and Bessemer Park.

"The children put a lot of effort into writing to Tony Blair and followed the whole issue very closely. They will be upset that we have lost."

Governors at Bessemer Park Infants had also objected to the merger while those at the nursery had backed it.