Thousand of pounds of equipment, including TWO pianos, disappeared from a school without a trace, according to an auditor’s report.

Laptop computers, electronic whiteboards, textbooks and music equipment went missing from Bishop Bilsborrow school when it merged last year with a neighbouring primary.

Managers at the Moss Side school had been criticised previously for blowing thousands of pounds on gadgets in the months before its closure.

All the items should have transferred to the new school, The Divine Mercy.

Manchester council spent six months investigating the whereabouts of the missing items.

But the council’s traded services department concluded the missing items remained unaccounted for and there were no further clues as to their whereabouts. The matter has not been referred to police.

Angry school governors have refused to accept the findings and have now accused education officers of mounting a half-hearted inquiry. In a letter to council boss Sir Howard Bernstein, Glyn Young, the school’s chair of governors, accused officers of failing to carry out a ‘rigorous investigation’.

He said: “The headteacher of The Divine Mercy provided a detailed list of missing resources in September 2009 and children’s services conducted an investigation. We believe the failure to produce a written report indicates a reluctance to fully pursue the investigation.”

Among the missing items was a library of textbooks worth £9,000. Council bosses gave the Divine Mercy £5,000 to replace the books, but it has not been compensated for other items.

Bishop Bilsborrow and St Edward’s merged last September because of falling numbers of Catholic pupils. New school the Divine Mercy was built on the site of Manchester City’s former Maine Road ground.

But in the months leading to the merger, local authority officials highlighted ‘significant concerns’ about spending at Bishop Bilsborrow. Their report showed cash had been used for a £10,000 staff training weekend in a Lake District hotel and a £1,200 meal. Sixty new laptops, 30 video cameras and five digital cameras, had also been purchased.

It has now emerged the school blew its budget for the year, and went into nearly £80,000 debt.

The school’s outstanding £78,000 overdraft is understood to have had to be paid off from the city council’s education budget.

Former Bishop Bilsborrow headteacher Pat Adams took legal action after failing to win the post as head of the new school, eventually receiving an out-of-court settlement.

She is now head of Crab Lane primary, north Manchester.

A Manchester council spokeswoman said: “We’ve had a letter detailing a number of ongoing concerns from the school and will respond in detail to this. We are taking these concerns seriously but it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment any further at this stage given that we have not yet replied to the letter.”

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