ROTTING and splitting wood, holes and cracks in frail old plasterboard, heaters that often leave pupils either shivering or baking hot...

These are the "scandalous" conditions in a dozen 30-year-old portable buildings which serve as classrooms at Huntington School in York.

And yet the Government has turned down a bid for £2 million from City of York Council to help fund top-class replacement buildings, which would include drama and dance studios and youth club facilities.

Head teacher Chris Bridge invited the Evening Press to look round the buildings yesterday after the Department for Education revealed that the application had been turned down.

"These are really shanty town conditions," he said. "They are shocking, scandalous."

He pointed to sections of wood at the bottom of one classroom wall that are so rotten they simply crumble away if touched.

In another classroom, a crack has developed between a wall and the floor, and several have holes in the ageing plasterboard walls, through which the insulation can clearly be seen.

Mr Bridge said the conditions were bad for the morale of both staff and pupils.

And it was ironic that the funding decision came only a day before he was due to attend a press conference in London today about the 2002 "value added" indicators of schools performances, which compared last year's GCSE results with pupils' performances at primary schools five years earlier.

He said that out of 1,900 specialist schools in the country, Huntington had come equal 46th.

"This means we are getting the plaudits, and being invited down to press conferences and we are doing it in buildings that are terrible."

As reported in later editions of last night's Evening Press, City of York Council had made two major capital funding bids to the Government. The other bid, for £2.4 million to build a replacement secondary school for children with special educational needs at Galtres, was approved.

The council will now decide whether to apply again next year for funding for Huntington, or try to resolve the problem some other way.

Mr Bridge, who praised the help the school had received from the council, said he was not certain if the buildings would last another two years, but believed that if a renewed bid was submitted to the Government, it was "absolutely essential" it succeeded.

North Yorkshire schools will receive £6.45 million, mostly from the Government's modernisation fund, with £767,366 going to Voluntary Aided schools.

Cynthia Welbourn, North Yorkshire's director of education, said the projects marked the continued improvement of schools in the county.

She said: "We believe having the right environment for children is crucial for learning."

Updated: 11:02 Tuesday, April 01, 2003