IT WAS a rare sight for the boys of a Southampton city school.

But it was a glimpse of things to come when a group of girls set foot inside the all boys Bellemoor Secondary School.

In 2008, the Shirley school is expected to become mixed, taking in female students for the first time.

On Thursday, four girls from Horndean Technology College spent the day at Bellemoor to test out how it could accommodate the opposite sex.

Martin Brown, deputy head at Bellemoor, said: "Lots of good things came out of the visit. They liked our prefect system, which they don't have at their school, and they liked our focus on group work.

"They also suggested we introduce other sports for girls, like netball."

It was the first stage of a new partnership between the two schools. They plan to organise teacher and pupil swaps and e-learning using the Internet and e-mails.

Backing Bellemoor's switch to become a mixed school has already got the backing of Southampton City Council's scrutiny panel. The move must now go out to statutory consultation.

Cassie Ellins, head teacher at Bellemoor, said: "People can still object to us becoming co-educational but given the strength of feeling so far I think it's unlikely there will be strong objections. We are preparing for it to go ahead as we cannot sit back and assume nothing will happen."

The plans are part of a city-wide shake-up of secondary education and the result 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 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.