At a meeting of education chiefs, lead member for education, Cllr David Elkin (Con), ruled that the two existing schools will close and re-open as a new school, with one head teacher and a single governing body, during the next academic year.

Cllr Elkin said, "The underlying aim here is to raise standards for students. We believe creating a new all-through primary will benefit all pupils. Hampden Park is already a feeder school for Highfield and we believe creating one school with single leadership and management will provide better continuity of learning for pupils and will help achieve higher standards."

The primary school will initially be on two sites but education bosses will try to get funding to expand Highfield, in The Hyndeye, so they can shut and sell off the Hampden Park site in Broderick Road.
There were 77 responses to a consultation. Education chiefs said they followed exactly the same process as they did for a consultation on Roselands Infant School and Stafford Junior School. At the same meeting, proposals the merge Roselands and Stafford were rejected.