Council seeks new school for Wardle High

Date article online: 17/03/2008

Rochdale Council's Cabinet will consider a report today (17 March) calling for a new state-of-the-art school to replace the existing Wardle High School.

The new 1200 place school would be built alongside the existing school and could open in January 2014.

Rochdale Council's cabinet member for children, schools and families, Councillor Irene Davidson said: "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a brand new top-class school at Wardle that will secure the school's future, provide vastly improved facilities and inspire pupils and staff as they strive for excellence.

"The new school will also open its doors to the whole community, giving local people access to its high quality facilities too."

The council had originally intended to refurbish the existing school.

Explaining the reason for the change in plan for the school, the council's Executive Director responsible for schools, Terry Piggott said: "As the detailed plans for the school were developed, it became clear that the amount of refurbishment required would be difficult, costly and severely disrupt the learning of pupils for a long time.

"The new plans guarantee the school a future and the brand new facilities will provide the ideal setting in which we can offer pupils a rich and exciting curriculum taught to the highest standards."

Wardle High School Governors supported the proposals for the new build at their meeting on 10 March.

Summing up his reasons for supporting the proposals, Wardle High School Headteacher, Graham Wright said: "The question for me as headteacher was, did I want to recommend to the Governors a refurbishment programme that would interfere with learning for two years and waste a lot of money making good the bad, or recommend a new school with no disruption to learning that would enable progress to be maintained and accelerated afterwards? No contest! The needs of the learners must come first."

The Governors did have strong concerns about using Private Finance Initiative money to help fund the bid but overall they felt the benefits outweighed the costs.

Graham Wright continued: "The additional funding required for PFI is a relatively small sum that will bring massive gains. We will be able to plan exclusively for a new building that will maximize the learning opportunities for our students and not have to accept comprises based on making good the existing accommodation."