Education
| TOP STORIES |  | | | | | | | FEATURES | | | | | | MAYOR NEWS | | | | TRAVEL | | | | COMPETITIONS | | |
|
|
|
HERTS: School sales raise £25 million
More than £25million has been raised in Hertfordshire through the sale of primary schools over the past ten years it has been revealed.
Nine sites were sold across the county, including two in Watford, for a total sum of £25.6million since 1998.
However, this does not reflect the number of schools that closed as in most cases, schools were merged or moved to brand new locations.
In addition, all money raised from the sale of school sites was put back into the council's education budget.
The site of the former Meriden JMI Primary was sold when the school was closed following a review of school places.
However, youngsters joined with others from Garston Junior and Garston Infants to become pupils at Berrygrove School, which opened in September 2005.
Buildings used to form the new school, in Fourth Avenue, were refurbished and extended with funding provided by the sale of the site of the Meriden School buildings for housing. The playing fields were retained.
In addition, Alban Wood Junior School closed in August 2005 and was united with the Infant school, in The Brow, in September 2005.
A section of the Junior school's site was sold for housing and the rest was retained as part for young people's resource centre that is due to open in 2009. Again, the playing fields were retained.
Hertfordshire County Council said falling birth rates prompted a series of school reviews, aimed at addressing a problem of surplus school places.
New housing developments were also said to have changed the demand of school places in certain areas.
A council representative said: "There has been a history of falling rolls in certain areas of Hertfordshire and our job as a local authority is to review the supply and demand of school places.
"Surplus places affect funding and put schools at risk, making it difficult to provide high quality primary school education. It is good management to plan carefully so that we can meet the future demand for school places in excellent schools which have the facilities and resources our children deserve.
"Any capital receipts that become available following the sale of a school site are returned to the education capital budget to improve school buildings.
"A considerable number of Hertfordshire schools were system-built in the 1950s and 1960s and are now in need of major refurbishment."
9:45am Thursday 17th April 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
