Schools look to council for cash after rejection

A Calderdale Council spokesman said it was looking to “find a solution from within their own internal resources” after the Department for Education (DfE) rejected a bid – which would have been worth more than £24m – to redevelop Todmorden High, Calder High in Mytholmroyd and Moorside Primary, in Halifax.

All three schools are judged to be in urgent need of improvement by Calderdale Council but now face a five-year wait before they are likely to be considered again for central Government funding.

Todmorden High’s head teacher Helen Plaice is set to have talks with the authority’s director of children’s services Stuart Smith next week to discuss alternative future options.

She told the Yorkshire Post the council might consider setting aside funding it uses for emergency work in schools to help to fund rebuilding projects instead.

The funding blow for Calderdale came after a five-month delay on a Government decision about which schools would be rebuilt under the new Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP).

The fund was launched last year after the coalition had scrapped the £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010.

Education Secretary Michael Gove announced that 261 schools across the country would receive money, but another 326 had missed out and that included the Calderdale buildings.

He said spending had been targeted on schools which were in the worst condition and that those which missed out could re-apply in the next comprehensive spending review period.

The decision not to include Todmorden High caused a shock last month with an MP, council education chief and a teaching union representative all questioning the decision.

However Ms Plaice said: “I think it caused more outrage outside of the school than it did within it.”

She added: “Our attitude remains the same which is that we will roll up our sleeves and get on with it.”

In the past Todmorden School has had to cope with an evacuation after a gas leak, water being cut off after a boiler failure and a power cut in the space of a week.

The school budgeted £14,000 for repair work in the last financial year but ended up having to pay 10 times that amount – with the council stepping in to find much of the emergency funding.

Ms Plaice said: “We used to have what we would call wobbly Wednesdays as something always seemed to go wrong on the day. We would have an evacuation or a power failure.

“The problem we have is that the school was built in the 1950s to last for 30 years to the late 1980s and somebody planning a school back then couldn’t possibly know what the demands would be on a 21st century school.

“We have had to build a new electricity substation within the school because every time pupils turned our computers on the lights would be dimmed in the staffrooms.

“One of the buildings was designed as a primary school so is built to hold up to 30 eight, nine or 10-year-olds.

“It is very different when you have got 30 16 or 17-year-olds in the same space.

“In the 1950s pupils were expected to spend more of their time sat at their desks whereas now lessons involve more moving around between groups,” she said.

She also said the school’s water pipes were now bursting and in one case they were faced with paying three months of inflated water bills for hot water which was “leaking into the ground” because it was happening under the school’s tiny sports hall which could not be dug up during term time because of the disruption it would have caused.

“We have one sports hall the size of a single badminton court, there is another area which we use for sports but it is also where we have assemblies and do our exams, so during the summer in exams season we have to fit everyone’s PE lessons in a week into that one small hall.”

However Ms Plaice was clear the building was a challenge to overcome.

Two years ago the school was in the top 100 in the country for the most improved GCSE results. She also said pupils were fond of it.

“I did a presentation to the pupils where I showed them some photos of newly developed schools and then of ours and their reaction was to say ‘ah bless’.

“They like their school building – it is like a rickety old car which you shouldn’t keep spending money on to get it through its MOT.”

Calderdale Council also considers both Moorside Primary in Halifax and Calder High to be urgent cases.

When in opposition Michael Gove was reported to have said that Calder High in Mytholmroyd was among the worst conditions of building he had ever seen.

Last month Calderdale Council’s Cabinet member for children’s services Megan Swift said the decision to reject the three Calderdale schools bids was “mystifying”

She added: “The council is being forced to throw good money after bad in maintaining these schools.

“But we will continue to ensure the safety of pupils on the site.”