PLANS have been drawn up to re-house Firwood Special School on Withins Secondary School site in Breightmet.

It will mean that Firwood pupils would benefit from using facilities at Withins School in Newby Road.

A similar plan has already worked successfully for Woodside Special School which was split between two mainstream school sites.

Woodside Special Junior School moved into the grounds of Masefield Primary School and changed its name to Ladywood while Woodside Special Senior School moved to the Deane School, and became Rumworth School. Firwood School, in Crompton Way, Tonge Moor already has close links with the Withins thanks to its older pupils regularly helping out at the special school.

If the two schools are based at the same site, both sets of pupils and staff would have an opportunity to learn about different educational needs.

Assistant director of Education at Bolton Council, Chris Swift, said: "It's still early days for this idea, but we've written to both sets of parents to say that it's something we'll be looking at in the future.

"There's lots of technical issues around space and useage of the buildings which need to be examined, but a report should be completed on it by next January when it will then go through the public consultation processes."

Plans to jointly site Greenfold Special School with Cherry Tree Primary School in Farnworth have been put on hold following concerns over funding.