Cumbria County Council's Cabinet decision this week (Tuesday 14 March) to go ahead with plans to establish an Academy on the Morton School site means the last major decision on reorganisation of secondary education across Carlisle has now been taken.
If all of the plans come to fruition then Carlisle will have the city centre Learning Village, with a rebuilt Trinity School, an Academy to replace St Aidan's and NCTC, and Newman school with new facilities.
In the west there will be a new Academy to replace Morton.
Many of the schools in the Carlisle area have old and difficult to manage buildings. These will be replaced by state of the art educational environments with modern ICT and newly designed suites of well equipped learning spaces - classrooms, studios, laboratories and resource centres. Sports facilities will be upgraded as part of the process.
An important aspect of the planning is to ensure all the schools, including the two in the west of the Carlisle area and William Howard in the east, have access to the city centre opportunities. Good good transport networks need to be in place to enable this to happen.
The total funding available to be spent on the schools could be as much as £80 million. However, this would represent only part of the potential education landscape in the city.
The redeveloped Carlisle College will sit at the heart of the Learning Village, and funding could be available for a 14 -19 centre to be located there as well. The University has shown interest in the plans and may join the project with some major building in the Village.
All in all, the Carlisle area could have over £100 million of new and modernised education buildings to help raise the achievement and aspirations of our young people who are the economic and social future of the city.
Caldew school, Dalston, which has an improvement partnership with Morton School, William Howard School and Brampton which will take pupils when Lochinvar closes, will all have funding for some new facilities.
Councillor Philip Chappelhow is the county council's cabinet member for Children's Services. He said:
"There have been times in the process so far when not everything has been plain sailing, but that is only to be expected when so much is involved and needs to be considered.
"Now though I firmly believe that, given the positive reactions we are getting from the DfES, we can work successfully with them, the schools, and the local communities to provide the best possible education for the young people in the Carlisle area."
ENDS
Further information from Alison Lister, media team on 01228 606335