Funding for New School

The Council has just been advised that we will receive up to £5.5 million from the Scottish Government to help fund our new all-through Special Needs School on the site of the proposed Shared Campus in Port Glasgow, bringing together the existing Lilybank and Glenburn Schools. The funding is from the ‘Scotland’s Schools for the Future’ programme.

Whilst any funding is welcome the figure falls short of what we had hoped to receive from the Scottish Government. When we submitted our bid we estimated that the new school will cost around £12.8 million. Given that the funding allocation was on a 50/50 basis we had hoped to receive £6.4m.

We will now have to look to meet the additional costs from within our overall school estates funding provision, which could mean other projects being delayed.

Our disappointment is compounded by the fact that we were not even permitted to make a bid for secondary school funding - where the Government promised to meet 67% of the costs - and that the special needs school - being an all-through primary and secondary - is being treated as if it was a primary and only receiving 50% of what The Scottish Futures Trust believes it should cost to build.

It is worth remembering that the new Shared Campus will cost in the region of £50m, with the Scottish Government's grant meeting around 11% of this and the Council funding the remaining 89%.

This puts things into a bit of perspective, doesn't it?