CONTRACTORS face a race against time to get a single site school for children with behavioural difficulties ready for the new term.

With just two weeks before the start of the new year Stocks Park School in Horwich should be ready to accommodate pupils from Lostock Park Special School following a controversial merger.

Four mobile classrooms should have been sited in the grounds of the Horwich school over the summer holidays. However, all that stands there at the moment are the foundations. Following the merger a total of 50 pupils need to be accommodated at Stocks Park School by the beginning of the new term on September 9.

And accommodation is not the only problem caused by the merger.

Staff, who have been meeting this week to arrange the transfer of equipment and facilities, complain that the move has been badly organised.

One teacher, who did not want to be named, feared that the single site school would not be ready on time.

The manager of the Special Needs Service in Bolton, Mr Cameron Chisholm, said the education department has been given an assurance by the contractor siting the classrooms that they would be finished on site by September 6.

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