HATTERS Lane Upper School is to close in August and reopen at the beginning of the new school year in September with a new headteacher, new name and new uniform.

The changes follow a bad Ofsted report which found the High Wycombe school needed special measures to get it out of trouble. Special measures are the most damning recommendations Ofsted inspectors can make.

A longer-term £15 million scheme to rebuild the school, restructure the primary system in east High Wycombe by closing three schools, and to provide more of the community facilities the deprived area needs, could depend on private financiers being found. There is also a call for low-cost housing to be built to attract new teachers.

The recommendations, from the Wycombe Commission, a group of local councillors and people with an interest in education, is now on the desk of Mike Appleyard, Buckinghamshire County Council's cabinet member for schools. He will put it to the cabinet on February 5.

The Hatters Lane School suffers from falling rolls, as parents send their children to upper schools elsewhere. It has space for 795 children, but in September 1999 had just 461.

The figure is reflected in many of the Totteridge and Micklefield area's seven primary schools which between them have space for more than 1,600 children but which last April had just 1,136 pupils on roll.

The commission report recommends creating four combined schools, all with nursery places and community facilities, in line with LEA policy which says combined schools get better results and are more efficient to run.

This would mean closing Bowerdean Nursery and redistributing the 80 places there to other schools.

But Labour group leader Trevor Fowler, a member of the commission, does not agree with the closure and says Bowerdean is in a deprived area and and does sterling work for families.

He also said Hatters Lane needed some improvements quickly and added: "I am concerned about the children who are there now."

County council leader Cllr Shakespeare warned that however good a scheme seemed, parents didn't like schools closing.

About £1 million has been made available for Hatters Lane under the Government's Fresh Start scheme, which provides money to help failing schools.

After final cabinet approval it would have to go through the consultation process.