MP Backs School's Funding Request (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

MP Backs School's Funding Request

A SCHOOL'S bid to improve its cramped buildings has been boosted by the intervention of Cotswolds MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.

Mr Clifton-Brown contacted Gloucestershire County Council last month to ask when a decision will be made on whether Southrop Primary School will receive the additional £80,000 it needs to improve its facilities.

The school needs to raise £200,000 to enable it to convert its existing library into a computer suite, build a new library and demolish the existing school office and replace it with a new administration block.

So far the 43-pupil school has raised £120,000, £50,000 from the county council and £70,000 saved from its own budget.

Head teacher Kate Holmes said Ofsted inspectors told the school in 1998 and again this year that it needed to improve its standards of ICT teaching.

However, its buildings are too small to include a computer suite, so the only option is to expand.

Mrs Holmes said: "It's going to be extremely difficult to improve our ICT standards without these improvements.

"Ofsted pointed out the premises were part of our problem."

After receiving a letter from David Murphy, chairman of the school's Parent Teachers' Association, asking him to see if he could help resolve the funding issue, Mr Clifton-Brown wrote to the county council at the end of March.

Last week the council's Strategic Capital Working Group - an advisory group which looks at capital and building projects - met to discuss the funding request.

A county council spokesman said the funding details are still being looked at and a decision has yet to be made.

Mrs Holmes said: "It does seem to have moved things on and I'm very pleased.

"Whatever the outcome is at least we are going to have a decision. "Our problem is that we have been stuck in limbo."

Mr Clifton-Brown said: "I wrote a very sharp letter to the LEA (Local Education Authority) and I suspect that with the battle at Sir William Romney going on at the moment they didn't want to open up a battle on this front.

"I very much hope they do get their funding."