A £594,000 building project to turn an Oxford first school into a primary has got the go-ahead.

St Barnabas CE Aided First School in Hart Street, Jericho, is to become a 240-pupil primary school from September 2002.

It will gain four new classrooms, a computer room, a larger staff room, extra storage, cloakrooms and pupil toilets.

Two of the classrooms, the computer suite and staff room are part of another scheme that has already been approved by the Department for Education and Employment and will be built at the same time.

The size of the school's playground will be increased by moving Oxford City Council's community play area on to the playing field.

St Barnabas is to extend its age range from five to seven to five to 11 as part of plans to abolish Oxford's middle schools and replace them with a two-tier system of primaries and secondaries.

The building project was approved by Oxfordshire County Council's education management sub-committee.

Cllr Janet Morgan, chairman of the committee, said: "We welcome this because it will replace wooden buildings with brick-built buildings."