Four Southampton schools will have another chance to save themselves from closure.

City education boss Ann Milton yesterday rubber-stamped plans to shut Millbrook, Oaklands, Grove Park and Woolston schools in a major overhaul of the city's secondary education system.

Parents now have more time to make their feelings known about the proposals.

A six-week consultation period will be launched sometime in the New Year before a final decision is made by the city's schools organisation committee in the summer.

The proposals would see two new schools created on the Oaklands site in the west of the city and on the Grove Park site in the east.

All teachers, support staff and administrative workers at the four schools will have to apply for new jobs at the two schools.

Other proposals include turning both Bellemoor School and Regents Park, both in Shirley, from single sex schools to mixed. It is hoped this may stem the exodus of pupils from Shirley to mixed schools in Romsey.

The latest proposals are the culmination of a ten-month process, entitled Learning Futures, involving three separate rounds of consultation.

Together the recommendations are designed to remove around 1,000 surplus places due to declining birth rates and families moving out of the city.

Education bosses predict that by 2010 one in four secondary school places - funded by the taxpayer - will be empty if nothing is done.

They also want to improve the city's educational standards and hope to achieve this by reducing the number of single sex schools, to help raise boys' attainment.

Their long-term plan is to create so-called learning campuses providing learning opportunities for children from primary school age through to adulthood.

The schools organisation committee, which will make the final decision, is made up of representatives from the three main political parties, school governors, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Learning and Skills Council.

If the schools organisation committee cannot agree, the city council will have to ask a government-appointed Schools Adjudicator to make a final decision.