After many years waiting for good news, Marlborough’s St Peter’s Junior School and St Mary’s Infant School finally learned on Thursday (May 24) that the government was definitely providing money for a new building to house merged junior and infants school. The news came in the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove’s written statement that 261 schools will be rebuilt under the government’s two billion pound Priority School Building Programme.
The current St Peter’s occupies the former premises Marlborough Grammar School, which opened in 1905. St Peter’s subsequently took over when the Grammar School moved and celebrates its 50th anniversary on the site in September.
“So the announcement of the new building programme comes at a wonderful time,” the Rev Andrew Stoddert-Kennedy, Marlborough’s rector who is associated with the school, told Marlborough News Online.“I am delighted the project is going ahead.”
Both St Peter’s and St Mary’s are Church of England Voluntary Controlled schools. They had made a joint approach to the government for funds to build the merged school.
By the deadline of last October, 587 schools in England had applied to be rebuilt or refurbished. Now it has been revealed that the programme will be financed by a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts.
This programme replaces Labour’s Building Schools for the Future project which was cancelled when the coalition government came to power. This involved the expense of cancelling seven hundred projects and on Thursday (May 24) Gove admitted, in a BBC interview, that the way he announced that decision had been ‘clumsy’ and ‘insensitive’.
Last year Marlborough News Online learned that a new building for the two schools had been put forward as a PFI development. It is thought that the Treasury’s doubts about the PFI formula has delayed the announcement which had been expected last December.
In his announcement, Mr Gove said that he supported the coalition’s reform of the ‘PFI model’ and his department was working with the Treasury to ensure this programme would be “providing cost effective and more transparent delivery of services.”
Although forty-two schools – those with most severe conditions and all special schools on the list – would be fast tracked, there is no timetable for building. The first schools will be ready to re-open in 2014.
Money for Marlborough’s combined junior and infant school was first promised in 2008. Then in May 2010 it became clear that with the economic crisis the money would not be forthcoming. The site earmarked for the new school is south of George Lane.
It will not be the first move for St Peter’s. It used be located in the building that is now the town’s library. And while it was there one of the teachers was Eglantyne Jebb who founded the Save the Children Fund – a blue plaque put up there by the Town Council commemorates her work.
“We are absolutely delighted for the youngsters of Marlborough that this project is now going ahead,” Lionel Grundy, the Cabinet member of Wiltshire Council for eduation, told Marlborough News Online.
“St Peter’s and St Mary’s were at the top of our list of projects that came to a halt two years ago in the government’s spending review. We had five projects for rebuilding and refurbishment originally, now we have three that will be going ahead.”
But, as yet, the council had to await the specific detail of the funding that would be available under a PFI scheme and exactly what might achieved. There were other unknown factors as to timing and the question of selling off at least one site to help fund the project.
“Everyone has worked so hard, including your MP Claire Perry, to press ahead with this positive project,” he added. “We shall know more in the next two weeks.”
Olympic Torch relay – exclusive video coverage
