£300 million approval for building schools for the future
Statement from Councillor Christine Irvine, cabinet member for schools
Released: 11 September 2007
I am delighted to report that Wolverhampton has been given the green light to develop proposals that will help secure up to £300 million of investment in the City’s secondary schools.
Our proposals, part of the Governments’ Building Schools for the Future Programme will help expand and transform learning across the City of Wolverhampton. We will now work with children, parents, teachers and other stakeholders in the wider community to develop our plans ready to present to Government in the autumn.
Building Schools for the Future is about transforming secondary education to equip every child in the city with the skills to succeed and prosper in the 21st century.
Wolverhampton is already at the forefront of a number of innovative learning initiatives and is nationally recognised for work in e-learning and with 14-19 year-olds. We will now need to build on this excellent foundation, both literally with the refurbishment and rebuilding of our schools and through the transformation of learning.
We will achieve this by establishing two New City Academies – in Bilston and the north of the city. The city council will be one of the sponsors in both of the new centres of learning.
Highfields Science Specialist School, Heath Park Business and Enterprise College and Tettenhall Wood School are amongst those schools to be re-built.
We will encourage and support collaborative relationships with our secondary schools, which will include the development of Trust arrangements, between schools, further education providers and stakeholders, to improve education provision and place the school at the heart of the local learning community.
We plan to strengthen the links between primary and secondary schools to ease the transition of pupils between the phases, in addition to improvements in post-16 provision on school sites.
A skills development centre to enhance the work of the 14-19 programme is also proposed, together with further significant investment in information technology for schools.
Such massive change presents us all – parents, teachers, children and the wider community – with tremendous opportunities and challenges. It will be important to ensure that all stakeholders are consulted through a consultation programme to be launched shortly.
Wolverhampton’s children are the city’s future. Investing in their future contributes directly to the regeneration and the future prosperity of our city.
Therefore, I hope everyone will welcome this great step forward and commit to making a positive contribution to shaping these exciting plans.
Issued by the press office.