Some of the county's most shabby schools were today celebrating cash injections to bring them back up to scratch, writes Mark Templeton.
Education Secretary David Blunkett announced Oxfordshire is to get nearly 6.8m to fund projects at crumbling schools.
The county council's education department will use the grant to target nine of the worst schools where pupils are taught in old or portable classrooms.
The money, which will be spent over the next year, will go to:
Bicester Community College, 764,624, to replace aluminium buildings
Chilton Primary School, 1,624,168, to replace existing school
Banbury School, 2,537, 394, to replace aluminium classrooms, design technology suite and dance studios
Gosford Hill, Kidlington, 591,304, to replace old concrete buildings
Wantage Junior School, 320,320, for new classrooms as part of a project to bring infant and junior schools on one site
Marlborough School, Woodstock, 364,840, to replace an old sixth form building
Wheatley Park School, 195,048, to replace temporary classrooms
Stephen Freeman School, Didcot, 198,856, to replace old, temporary buildings
Wychwood Primary, 199,416, to replace two temporary classrooms.
David Brown, the county's capital development education officer, said: "These are some of the worst schools in the county and they are all thrilled to be receiving this cash.
"I've been phoning up the schools to tell them and they've been running up and down the corridors cele- brating."
A governors' spokesman at Chilton School primary school, near Didcot, said: "The news is a great morale booster to staff and pupils who have been housed in buildings which are increasingly unfit."
Story date: Wednesday 12 April
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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