A bright future for Evington Secondary Schools

The recent official opening of Judgemeadow Community College marked another milestone in the programme to replace or remodel secondary schools across the City. The Government launched its Building Schools for the Future Programme back in 2005 with the aim of replacing or remodelling every school in England . Leicester successfully bid to be one of the first councils in the Country to receive funding.

Transforming secondary education is a national priority. School standards have risen steadily but this is no longer sufficient, we have to dramatically improve the education and skills of our workforce in order to keep pace with our competitors in the global economy.

Our schools are designed and built to last around 60 years. What can looking back tell us about what schools will be like in the future? In 1950 could we have foreseen the internet or the impact that computers have had on our world? The answer is no, the pace of change grows ever faster and we just don't know what sort of schools we will need in the future. The only thing we can do is to try and make them as flexible and as adaptable to changing needs as we can.

So what does transformation mean and how will our new schools be different? Well, there are several aspects we should consider. Firstly, the way that young people learn has changed so we need to ensure that we have good access to ICT anywhere in school, outside of school and outside of school hours. We need to ensure that every student can follow a curriculum that is relevant and suitable for them so that means a broad range of academic and vocational courses, some of which could take place at work or college rather than school. Schools will specialise in certain subjects, for example, Judgemeadow in languages, City of Leicester College in business and enterprise, St Pauls in arts and students might spend some of their time in different schools in order to access specialist courses.

We need to make our schools places that local communities are proud of and put them back in their rightful place at the heart of these communities. In the future, they will be far more than just schools, they will be places where local communities can learn or enjoy leisure activities, they will be places where families can access a wide range of services, they will be places that are good for the environment and set an example for young people and their families.

So what is planned for Evington schools and when? Plans are in place for the replacement or remodelling of Crown Hills Community College , City of Leicester College and St Paul 's School and work will proceed as soon as the government grants the necessary approvals.

The first two projects in the next phase are Crown Hills Community College and City of Leicester College, which will both be completely new schools built on their present sites. Building work is expected to start in December this year and should be completed by the summer of 2013. The estimated costs are £22.7m for Crown Hills and £29.8m for City of Leicester . The future of St Pauls on its current site has been secured with the purchase of the playing fields. It is proposed to remodel this school at an estimated cost of £13.7m and work should start on site in the summer of 2011 and be completed in autumn 2013.

Further information on Leicester 's Secondary school building programme is available at www.leicester.gov.uk/bsf

John Garratt
Building Schools for the Future Programme Director
Leicester City Council