The human cost of closing a failing school will last a lifetime, parents have warned.

Pupils sobbed as education leaders made the final decision to shut East Brighton College of Media Arts (Comart).

The closure is likely to cost Brighton and Hove City Council £4 million in penalty fees to contractor Jarvis, which built and maintains the college under the terms of a Private Finance Initiative agreement.

The emotional toll on some of the 450 pupils now being allocated places at other schools, some miles from their homes, will be far-reaching, the school organisation committee was told.

Suzanne Ryan, a counsellor at Comart, said many had difficult family lives and the school's caring atmosphere provided their only stability.

She said: "The children come from really different backgrounds and many have fragmented home lives.

"Some have parents in prison. I'm very worried about the effect on their mental health of closing the school.

"They are internalising their anger, leading to stress and self-harm."

Negotiations have been under way for months to ensure the children are transferred smoothly to other secondary schools.

But fears remain that the new arrivals will be bullied for having been pupils at the failed school.

Comart had a truancy rate of almost ten per cent - ten times the national average.

Parents and teachers fear that will increase among the displaced pupils.

Some will start at new schools as early as Easter. It is thought most will be sent to Falmer. Comart will finally shut at the end of September next year.

Councillor Pat Hawkes, who chairs the children, families and schools committee, said: "The pupils will be moved in friendship and work groups depending on where they want to go.

"Education officials are working hard with the pupils, parents and staff who stand to be affected by a closure decision and in partnership with the city's secondary heads.

"Arrangements have been agreed for almost all Year 9 pupils to transfer to other schools this September in order to start their GCSE courses.

"I believe closing the school has to be the right decision because the majority of local parents have made it quite clear in recent years they do not want their children to go there."

If the school is abandoned, the education authority must pay Jarvis for the upkeep of the building.

There are tentative plans to use the rooms - many packed with modern technology - as a community college working with adults from the area, which has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the UK.

Mark Whitby, executive principal at the college, will manage the closure.

He said: "There is a degree of trepidation among the pupils but most are quite excited and looking forward to the new challenge and new approach.

"Against the background of closure and behind the scenes all the staff have been working frantically with other schools to secure the very best future for the pupils."

He said there were concerns about bullying but many children who had already started at Varndean School had fitted in and made friends.

Teachers who will lose their jobs are being given help to find new posts in the city.

The Whitehawk school's closure is the third at the site in seven years.

In 1997 the then Stanley Deason school was axed after it was put in special measures.

It was transformed into Marina High School but that closed two years later.

The comprehensive reopened as the College of Media Arts in September 1999 under the Government's Fresh Start scheme.

"Superhead" Dr Jill Clough left a private school in London to take on Comart but quit in spring last year through ill health brought on by stress.