Bexhill High joy

The nail-biting is over at last for staff and governors who in the hiatus that ensued after construction in 1997 at the Gunters Lane site of phase one of the re-build have had to endure difficult working conditions.

Not only is the school currently a split-site operation, buildings at the Down Road campus - built immediately pre-war but not opened until it was almost over, have become badly dilapidated, needing an estimated 3m of maintenance work.

Now thanks to East Sussex County Council's successful bid under the Government's Pathfinder schools building programme, head, staff, governors and -as the head explains - the wider community will be involved in turning a vision for the future into reality.

Confirmation was received last week that, despite earlier misgivings, the High WILL be getting 33m of Government grant for its re-build.

For the county council, the coup provides the education authority with its biggest-ever school building grant.

The county sums-up the prospects for Bexhill's schoolchildren:

"The grant will help achieve the council's vision for education for the 21st Century by creating high quality academic education in state-of-the-art new school buildings for Bexhill High school, as well as excellent vocational training opportunities for students at Bexhill High School and other schools in the area.

"It promises to be a facility for the whole community and will also contribute to the economic development opportunities in the Bexhill area.

"The grant also includes 2.3 million for facilities for children with special educational needs."

There is now a tight deadline to meet if the new building is to be ready for use at the start of the 2010 academic year.

Building work is scheduled to start next year.

Mike Conn told the Observer: "For Bexhill, for the community of Bexhill and for the Rother area as a whole - East Sussex even - this is fantastic news.

"We can embark on a vision for the development of education in this area.

"I have to take my hat off to the county council - to the officers and to the elected members - because we could not have got this without this level of support from them. We would have been 'just another school.'

"The next phase is critical - the involvement of the whole community at large. We need everyone to help us formulate a vision of education in the future. This is our opportunity to look at what is possible within the constraints of resources and to look at what funding is available to make it even better."

The High has been working for many years with St Richard's Catholic College and Hastings College to provide vocational training.