Dear Parents and Carers
It is always a pleasure to welcome Matt Western MP into school, especially as the meeting becomes a kind of reflective supervision where I can vent about a whole range of things, mostly funding related. Also, looking at the picture, nice to see that Matt and I seem to share the same barber, though I think very different dieticians.
On this occasion there was something quite specific I wanted to discuss and this was about the funds that Government holds to support schools in improving building stock or rebuilding. In the past I have mentioned when we have been successful with a bid to complete work in school or, as with our new teaching block, where we have worked in collaboration with Warwickshire County Council and the Stowe Valley Trust. However, I don’t mention the many bids that are unsuccessful and this is happening more regularly with our applications to the DfE. Our main school buildings are tired and extremely expensive to maintain and we have been bidding at every opportunity to the school rebuilding fund in the hope of rebuilding upper school and lower school. As the fund is not sufficient to keep pace with the Government’s own school rebuilding targets, we haven’t been optimistic and therefore also bid into other pots of money, especially as we need to urgently replace our boilers and heating distribution system. Unfortunately, we have had no success with either pots and the reasons given are never satisfying.
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