SCHOOL governors who are at risk of being suspended are locked in a fight with Bolton’s education bosses.

Bolton Muslim Girls School’s governing board is battling to have a council formal warning overturned.

The notice, which was issued earlier this month, could lead to Bolton Council stepping in and replacing governors.

Now the school’s governing body is appealing to education watchdog Ofsted to overturn the notice. The appeal is the latest in a series of dramatic events unfolding at the school, which was rated as good with outstanding features by Ofsted after it moved into the state sector.

Bolton Council has refused to reveal the grounds for the notice, other than to say it had “a number of concerns about the governance”.

The council also said it was working with a small representative group of governors to resolve the concerns.

It is understood that the warning is not about failing standards, as the Swan Lane school is one of the top performing in the borough.

A formal warning notice could allow the local education authority to seize control of the school — although the council has previously said it was waiting for a response from the governors before considering its next step.

Governors have said they were exploring the idea of becoming an academy, which would allow the school to break away from the local authority and become a state-funded independent school.

Girls, teachers and parents staged a protest at the school earlier this month as governors were meeting to discuss the possibility of becoming an academy.

The Bolton News understands that no decision about bidding for academy status has been made.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: “The school has appealed against the formal warning notice and we are waiting for Ofsted’s decision on this.”

Bolton Muslim Girls opened as a fee-paying school in the 1980s, but became a state school in 2007 after it was granted voluntary aided status.

Governors declined to comment.