A school which attracts Billericay and Basildon students is celebrating after being given permission to exand its numbers.

St Martin's School in Hutton annually sees around 80 pupils from the two towns apply to join, with a large number proving successful.

Now it has been given government permission for a 157-pupil expansion, set to net the school around £3/4m.

Four Brentwood schools - St Martin's, Hedley Walter, Shenfield and Brentwood County High - sent a petition to the Funding Agency for Schools demanding they be allowed more places.

The four are to be allowed a total of 508 more places and are being given government funding of between £4,000 and £5,000 a pupil, to do so.

Dr Nigel Darby, school head, was slammed earlier in the term after writing a letter to Billericay parents singing the praises of the Hanging Hill Lane school.

The letter was seen as a clear attempt to persuade students to cross the Billericay and Brentwood divide - and turn their backs on schools such as Mayflower and Billericay.

Dr Darby said staff hoped to double the size of the school's sixth form common room and build an information centre with new library, lecture theatre, seminar rooms and IT suite.

He added that pupils would get a first class education wherever they chose to go in the area.

He said: "Over 270 new pupils joined the school at the start of this term and we told the government agency that we could not take more than 246 pupils in future years unless we had new specialist buildings.

"We will now be able to continue with 270 to 280 pupils in each year group and will have the buildings and playground space in which to accommodate them properly."

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