GOVERNMENT education chiefs could be weeks away from backing proposals for a free secondary school in Swanage.

The dream of secondary education in the town became a real possibility last year following the coalition’s Academies Bill.

Campaign group Education Swanage, which proposed the school, will have a budget of £1.8million for 375 pupils, should the Department of Education approve.

The group is now preparing a detailed business model and hopes to receive the official thumbs-up soon.

“It could be just a matter of weeks before we learn the decision,” said Education Swanage’s Paul Angel.

He added: “If this happens, what it means is there has been an official commitment to opening the school. Unless something massive, like a change of government, comes along, it will happen.”

However, any school agreed would be at least two years away from taking in its first pupils.

And exactly where it will be based remains undetermined.

The privately-owned former grammar school site in Swanage looks likely to make way for new housing.

Mr Angel said: “At this stage all I can say is that we are looking at a number of potential sites in Swanage.”

Early last year, Dorset County Council ruled against a secondary campus in Swanage, which had been considered as part of the Purbeck Review, a £36.5million shake-up of Purbeck schools.

This review, agreed by the county and a national schools adjudicator, will see Purbeck’s education system cut from three to two tiers. Local campaigners begged for a twin campus secondary site, serving Wareham and Swanage, but the county refused – saying it would cost an extra £900,000 per year.

Free schools are outside of local authority control, receiving money direct from government.

The Purbeck Review, involving the closure of four middle schools, the expansion of 13 first schools into primaries and expanding the Purbeck School into a secondary for 11 to 18-year-olds, will be phased in by 2013.