A PLEA is being made to Devon County Council to consider installing lockers at Okehampton College to prevent pupils having to carry heavy bags around with them all day.

The issue was raised by Cllr Hyder Pirwany at a meeting of Okehampton Town Council last week.

Mr Pirwany said the problem had been going on for too long.

'A lot of pupils are very angry about it,' he told councillors. 'They have to carry heavy bags and PE kits from classroom to classroom, day in day out.

'I have spoken to the headteacher, Mr Herriman, many times about it and it seems the cost to install, maintain and staff the lockers is money the college does not have.'

Mr Pirwany said he felt sad that the money allocated to the school from the education authority each year did not provide for the lockers. This year the allocation was £2.7-million.

'Eventually this kind of strenuous activity will lead to back problems later on in life.' he added.

Mr Herriman said students could not have lockers in classrooms because they were constantly moving about and would have to disrupt other lessons to access their lockers.

The only place large enough for lockers for the 1,218 students was the basement which could be converted, he said.

'We would have to have someone on duty the whole time and just that would cost £12,000 a year,' he said.

The headteacher said the realistic income the school had to fiddle around with each year was less than £10,000.

'There is no flexibility on that whatsoever,' he said. 'If I could get volunteers to monitor the lockers we could be half the way there.'

Mr Herriman said he was grateful to Cllr Pirwany for raising the subject but he did not expect the local education authority to come up with any more cash because it, too, was short of funding.

'We give advice to parents and students about buying haversack-style bags for their backs which are better for them than other kinds of bags, but that is all we can do at the moment,' he added.

'Sixth formers are the only people with their own common room and they have lockers.

'If the Department of Education building regulations actually stipulated social bases for year groups as one the criteria for school buildings, there would be no problem.'

The town council has agreed to write to Devon County Council asking for the installation of lockers at Okehampton College to be considered.