Plans to spend £169m on Liverpool schools announced
Plans to spend £169m on rebuilding 12 Liverpool schools and invest in several others have been announced by the city council.
The transformation will see several schools rebuilt on their current sites and others at new locations. Work is already well under way on the first of the schools - Notre Dame Catholic College in Everton - which is set to open in September 2013. The plans are set to be approved by the mayor's cabinet at a meeting on Monday. Proposals also include plans to spend money on other schools most in need of investment. The council said it would benefit schools which had not been improved when the government cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme. Local workforce In summer 2010 the scheme was axed by Education Secretary Michael Gove, who said Labour's £5bn programme to replace all of England's secondary schools was wasteful and inefficient. Liverpool City Council hopes its proposed five-year scheme will create 400 apprenticeships and has pledged to spend 60% of its budget employing labour from Liverpool, rising to 70% across Merseyside. Mayor Joe Anderson said: "Our children deserve the very best education, and this investment will deliver huge improvements in the quality of the buildings they are taught in. "We have already seen the first spade going in the ground at Notre Dame and over the next few years thousands of pupils will benefit from the investment we are making. "I am also determined that we also make sure the project benefits local firms and their workforce as well and we are working to make sure that these new schools are truly made in Liverpool." Aside from Notre Dame Catholic College, schools to benefit from rebuilding work include: Archbishop Beck Secondary in Fazakerley; St John Bosco Secondary and Our Lady of St Swithin's Primary in Croxteth; Archbishop Blanch Secondary near the city centre; St Hilda's Secondary in Aigburth; Holly Lodge Secondary in West Derby; Bank View Special School in Fazakerley; New Park Primary in Kensington; Northway Primary in Childwall and SFX Secondary and St Julie's Secondary in Woolton. The project will be paid for with capital funding, receipts from the sale of surplus school sites and council resources.