THE battle to save Bridport's Mountjoy School is raging again - years after campaigners thought they had won it.

The promise of a brand new school on a site at Flood Lane has been thrown into doubt after education officials backed a dramatic policy u-turn.

They are now recommending that the children's special needs could be met by providing units at existing mainstream schools.

Siting the seniors at Sir John Colfox comprehensive and the juniors at St Mary's primary are amongst the possibilities.

Uncertainty over future pupil numbers are said to be behind the new thinking. But the idea was greeted with "shock and dismay" by Mountjoy supporters and civic leaders this week.

Plans to build a new Mountjoy have already been approved by the county council. Any recommendation by the officers to abandon it would need support from the elected members, it has been stressed.

And Bridport county councillor Sandra Brown pledged: "This elected member certainly won't be voting for it."

Her opposition was backed by town councillors and West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin who told The News: "I certainly don't intend to give up my strong efforts to ensure there is a replacement."

Meanwhile Friends of Mountjoy Chairman Frank Wilde urged a new campaign to save the school which faced losing its unique identity if junior and seniors were separated.

"We are back to square one. This is totally unacceptable but we will not give in," he said.

News of the latest threat was given to parents in a letter from Head Teacher Pam Stewart.

She told them: "Contrary to the assurances previously made regarding the building of a new Mountjoy School, it is now the preference of the education officers to replace the school with primary and secondary aged units, based on mainstream school sites.

"I am concerned that the proposal is based, not so much on the quality of educational provision, but on projected pupil numbers. This, pupil numbers in future years, is something that is difficult to predict with any real accuracy within rural West Dorset where trends in pupil admissions are very different from our neighbouring rural areas, although we can show consistency in both patterns of admission and numbers on roll.

"It is sad to think that so many of you have fought battles before on behalf of the school and saved it, yet here we are again with more doubt and uncertainty. "I am reasonably confident that this time the question is only where and how to replace our current building rather than whether or not to replace it, but it is imperative that your views, as those who are directly affected by these proposals, are made known."

Now Mrs Stewart is urging people to lobby the county councillors before a meeting of the School Provision Consultative Panel in mid October where the new proposals will be discussed.

Governors' Chairman Ivan Kent expressed their "shock and dismay" at the new threat.

"The suggestion is outrageous. Special Units are not special schools. Parents choose special schools because they believe that their children need a quality of education and care that is just not available in mainstream schools. Why should they have less choice than other parents. Effectively they have only two choices now - us and Wyvern School in Weymouth and even that small degree of choice is to be removed.

"It is all very well for education officers sitting on fat salaries in comfortable offices at Dorchester to threaten parents and children in this way because it suits their master plan but have they the least idea of the distress they have caused?

"We have been promised by the elected politicians of the county council that the present building will be replaced. We shall see who is in charge the elected representatives or the officers."

At a meeting of Bridport town council plans committee on Monday members agreed to express their concerns.

Coun Henry Samuels said the officers had been fighting shy of building a new school and had come up with all sorts of reasons for not doing so.

"We know now they have been intending all along not to rebuild," he said. Coun Brown said the problem was that projected pupil numbers had dropped from 48 to 25.

"But I don't think it should be built at other schools because that's not the right answer for the children of Mountjoy," she said.

Chairman Coun Carole Murless said there were a lot of children at Mountjoy who could never attend a mainstream school. They faced enough troubles in their lives.

Coun David Tett said funding for the new school was in place and it was obvious the education officials were trying to find "all the excuses under the sun" not to go ahead.

"They are trying to renege on their promise to the people of Bridport," he added."