CHILDREN starting school at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School for the first time in September will have to miss some lessons and take others in the library.

This is headteacher Peter Holding's solution to the fact that there will be more 11-year-olds starting at the school than it is supposed to admit.

He does not like it, but he thinks it is the only practical way forward.

Dr Holding, who has met parents to explain the situation, said parents would like another Year Seven class.

He said: "I would not be able to assure parents that we could give their children quality teaching."

Fifteen children won places at the school on appeal, so there will be 135 in Year Seven instead of the official admission number of 120.

This would mean four Year Seven classes with 33 or 34 pupils, when they should have 30 and Dr Holding is not prepared to have this.

Neither will he create a fifth Year Seven class. Instead children will be taken out of class on a rota basis.

Each will miss the equivalent of eight days' schooling in the year.

The extra class would involve 40 lessons in 13 subjects each week.

He said he would not be able to find the whole range of part-time specialist subject teachers and existing staff would not be able to do the extra work.

He also said it would cost money and that the school would end up £25,000 to £30,000 in the red.

The solution was to teach four classes of 32 seven short of the 135 who would start in September.

Personal and Social Health and IT lessons would be taught in the library by senior staff to groups of seven children.

But the major difficulty, he said, was that those children would miss whichever subject was going on in class at the same time.

Staff would know who had missed what classes and it would be their responsibility to make sure that they made the work up.

Dr Holding said that he had said before that having an intake of more than 120 pupils would damage the education of the rest and that was still his position. He said 200 more children had passed the 11- plus this year, putting a strain on the system.

But he agreed parents needed to be able to appeal.

Nick Powley, Buckinghamshire County Council's head of schools planning, policy and performance, said the appeals panel was independent and its decision was binding.

He agreed with Dr Holding that creating a fifth class would involve extra staff and might not be financially viable.

He said: "It is up to the school, but clearly the children are entitled to a proper education and we would expect the school to provide it."