HEADteacher Patrick Hazlewood has taken the pioneering step of making a DVD to support St John's bid for a new £20m single site school.

The £11,000, three minute disc is the latest move by the Marlborough school to gather support for its plans that have become increasingly controversial.

St John's wants to bring together its two parts the former secondary modern school in Chopping Knife Lane and the old grammar school in Orchard Road on the Orchard Road site.

The town has generally supported the move that gained new momentum when Dr Hazlewood took over as head eight years ago.

However, there has been opposition to homes proposed as part of the redevelopment of the Chopping Knife Lane site. The local plan was modified to allow about 150 homes on the site but the school's partnership developer Crest Nicholson is known to want to build substantially more.

Residents in the Chopping Knife Lane area claim they have not been consulted and that too many homes are proposed.

More recently families living in Ducks Meadow, at the northern edge of the Orchard Road school site, have opposed the siting of the new St John's at the bottom of their gardens. They say the new three-storey building will be too close and overlook their homes.

While the town council has supported the single site school concept, its planning committee recently voted against the location of the new school buildings immediately behind the Ducks Meadow homes.

There is also some concern in the town about the futuristic looking high-tech school building with its grass roof and copper cladding, recycled from the present upper school roof, which would be visible from Marlborough's historic High Street.

The school has been rallying support for its plans by getting virtually every one of its students to sign a petition supporting the new single site building. Letters have been sent home to every parent and guardian asking them to send letters of support to Kennet District Council, which is due to make the final decision on the scheme.

Now the school hopes to enlist further support with its pioneering DVD showing a fly-by view of the inside and outside of the new school. It is believed the be the first time that a school has used DVD technology in this way.

Dr Hazlewood appears on the DVD expressing the need for the school to be united on one site and listing some of the new facilities. These include:

l A sports hall

l All weather sports pitch

l Theatre seating 500

l Community restaurant

l Dance studio

l Crche

l Landscaped grounds and courtyards

Dr Hazlewood said that to keep the two existing sets of buildings would require more than £8 million of urgent repair work. In addition, running two sites costs more than £200,000 a year, said Dr Hazlewood.

"This is money that everyone would much rather see being directly invested in the education of the young people at the school," he said.

Bursar Barry Worth said the costs of producing the DVD were about the same as making a scale model.

Limited copies of the DVD are available from the school office or by emailing: DVD@stjohns.wilts.sch.uk.