A massive cleaning-up operation began today at Fulford School as investigations continued into the cause of the blaze which gutted a block of the building.

Four classrooms in the school's craft, design and technology (CDT) block were devastated by the fire, which started in the early hours, yesterday.

Six others were badly damaged and at least another ten suffered smoke damage.

An official investigation into the cause of the fire began last night, said North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

A team of cleaners were in school today trying to get as many classrooms in use as possible for when some pupils start back on Thursday.

Teachers, accompanied by fire officers, were also picking their way through the rubble in an attempt to identify just how much of pupils' A-level work had been damaged.

Safety tests were being carried out on the school's heating and lighting systems.

Philip Wells, assistant director of education at the City of York Council, said: "We want to get the school up and running as soon as possible."

He said the council would be providing at least four temporary mobile classrooms until building work could be completed.

Loss adjusters were still calculating the value of the damage to the school.

Deputy head Dave Moores said staff hoped to get all pupils back to school by Monday. He said although some GCSE and A-level project work had been destroyed, art course work had survived the flames.

"During the day we had staff in and pupils coming down to have a look," he said.

"They were very shocked and anxious about their things.

"A lot of pupils had things in the CDT area, ranging from GCSE course work to exercise books."

Coun Eurig Thomas, a city education committee member and former Sheriff of York, said last night York schools appeared to be "jinxed", with the Fulford fire being the fourth major blaze at a local school in the last couple of years.

Park Grove was devastated in a blaze two years ago, and there have also been fires at Kingsway Junior School and Joseph Rowntree School.

Coun Thomas said: "We can only hope that there will be a return to normality as soon as possible."

Mike Peters, the city's Director of Education, said every effort would be made to ensure pupils whose A-level work was destroyed in the blaze would not suffer.

He said: "Exam boards do vary in their response. Sometimes they are sympathetic and sometimes they are not. We will be doing everything we can to ensure that students are not disadvantaged because of this, even if that means a significant amount of lobbying."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.