TWO Breightmet Catholic schools face an uncertain future after the Government refused to back plans for a merger.

Parents fear that the shock decision will threaten the plan to combine St Osmund's RC Primary, Blenheim Road, and St Andrew's RC Primary, Withins Drive, in September this year.

Bolton's education chiefs wanted to merge the two schools due to falling pupil numbers.

Legal notices to formally discontinue the schools had been ordered. But the plan, which would have secured a joint future for the schools, has been thrown into doubt by the government's refusal to fund the project.

The schools were awaiting a final decision believing the scheme would definitely go ahead.

But it has now been revealed that the bid for a £2 million Department of Education capital grant -- which would have financed the merger -- has been unsuccessful.

St Osmund's headteacher John Thorpe said the news had created mass confusion in his school. He said his teaching staff, and parents, had been led to believe the bid would be successful.

Mr Thorpe said: "We've received absolutely no information. We don't know the reasons why the bid failed and we don't know what is going to happen now.

"We don't even know what our alternatives are.

"The 300 schoolchildren who come to these two schools and the staff don't know what is going to happen. We're in limbo."

Mr Thorpe added that news of the bidding failure had generated uncertainty and anxiety within his school. He said he had been inundated with inquiries from parents and staff as to whether the merger will go ahead at all.

But added that he had not received any guidance about what to tell people.

Under the merger plans the two schools would have merged into one voluntary aided RC primary school on the site of St Osmund's. The merger would be on a split site basis from September 2003 with transfer to the single site in September 2004.

The plan to merge was drawn up in because of surplus school places.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: "The bid for the capital funding we had requested has not been successful. We are actively trying to find out why it has failed."

Officers from the authority and the diocese are meeting shortly to look at the position in the light of the expected feedback with a view to presenting to the governing bodies of each schools positive possible ways forward."

But added: "It is too early at this stage therefore to make any decision on the proposals. Parents of children at each of the schools have been sent a letter from the authority outlining the position."