PARENTS, staff and pupils at the Vale of Berkeley College have been devastated to learn that education officers have recommended the school should close, despite months of effort to turn the place around.

A report released ahead of a meeting next week on the future of the secondary school has recommended the college to be shut because officers at Gloucestershire County Council believe it is too costly and will not achieve high enough standards.

Alex Greenway, who has two daughters at the school, said: "I am not surprised by their recommendation but I am obviously devastated to see it.

"At the end of the day this all boils down to money for the council, but should it always be about money?"

The 10 members of the council’s cabinet committee will make the final decision on whether to close the school, which has just under 300 pupils, next Wednesday.

They have been given three options, to let the school stay open, to close it by August 2011 or to phase out closure of year groups until 2014.

The recommendation is to close next year. In the report, drafted by the council’s director for learning and development Jo Grills, it claims that with a likely reduction in funding it will be "extremely difficult for the school to deliver an effective and appropriate curriculum".

The school, in Wandswell, was threatened with closure in October 2009 under the Labour government’s National Challenge programme, which said Vale of Berkeley should shut.

Two weeks later the school and the Gazette launched the Save our School campaign, in which over 2,500 people signed coupons to say they wanted it to remain open.

Staff and governors were given extra time to come up with ways to improve the school and they devised an innovative plan to create a co-operative trust school in which the college would make links with other schools and businesses to provide a wide and varied curriculum, as well as becoming more integrated with the community.

However the report said: "The co-operative trust proposal does not sufficiently address the key issues of raising standards, removing surplus places or financial pressures to enable VOBC to be viable in the future."

Mr Greenway, who is also a governor at the school, said: "They are missing a trick totally by not accepting the co-operative plans. If I could say one thing to the council it would be 'this is not just about money and one size doesn’t fit all".

The report sets out initial plans for the children if closure was accepted including finding extra places at Rednock and Katharine Lady Berkeley's School, holding a new admission process and providing transport to other parts of the county.

No one from the school was available for comment yesterday.