Architects have drawn up a master plan ahead of the complete rebuild of a crumbling Walsall school that found itself in the national spotlight over the condition of the decaying building.
The blueprint for Joseph Leckie Community Technology College has now been finalised and all that is needed is the cash to cover the cost of the work.
It will cost an estimated £25 million to rebuild the near 70-year-old school in Walstead Road West, Delves, which has 1,172 pupils.
The money is expected to be released in 2011 from a government pot called Building Schools for the Future.
Headteacher Keith Whittlestone said: “The master plan has been designed for the whole rebuild which will go ahead when Walsall receives funding.”
In the meantime, a £6 million block to replace 23 temporary classrooms in the grounds of the school, built in 1939, is under construction.
Work is on track and the block is due to open to pupils, aged between 11 and 18, in September, in time for the 2009 autumn term.
Joseph Leckie made local and national headlines when pupil Jade Neville, then aged 13, handed schools minister Stephen Twigg a dossier of photographs showing the poor state of the site and told him it was “falling down around us”.
Problems included crumbling buildings, crowded classrooms, inadequate ventilation and rats.
The damning file was given directly to the Government minister during a visit to the House of Lords in London in 2004.
Privately owned construction company Willmott Dixon, founded in 1852, is the contractor appointed to run the project.
Its head office is based in Hertfordshire but there is also a branch in Birmingham.
Joseph Leckie is not the only school in the borough in need of investment.
It was revealed in Express & Star on Saturday that Darlaston Science College in Herberts Park Road could be demolished and replaced with a building fit for the 21st century.
By Lyndsey Hunt
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