'Revamp would make day-to-day life better' (From Bicester Advertiser)

'Revamp would make day-to-day life better'

7:00am Monday 9th July 2012 in Education By Damian Fantato, covering Summertown, Jericho and North Oxford. Call me on 01865 425429

MILL Lane Primary School is hoping it will be flush with success this summer.

The Chinnor school is competing to win £7,500-worth of building work under the Oxford Mail/Leadbitter Group School Build competition to refurbish its run-down toilet block.

It is one of six schools across Oxfordshire which have been shortlisted for the competition.

School secretary Jenny Dunse said: “We are very excited about being shortlisted.

“We have an outside toilet block which is used by two classes of children and by the whole school at playtime.

“But they need to be gutted and revamped. We could do with some new cubicles and a good lick of paint.

“We have been trying to do something ourselves but it is extremely difficult because we do not have the money.”

Mrs Dunse said the toilets were in such a bad state that some of the children felt intimidated about going inside.

For the fourth year running Abingdon-based construction company Leadbitter has teamed up with the Oxford Mail to offer a £7,500 cash grant to a primary school to carry out improvement work to its building.

Leadbitter has been building the training grounds for the 2012 Olympics.

Ian Batchelor, operations manager at Leadbitter, said: “Whilst this project at first may sound unexciting, we took on board the staff and children’s pleas to just have a fit-for-purpose toilet block.

“From photographs and a letter from the children, if they won this project it would clearly make day to day life at school 100 per cent better for everyone.”

Schools must now collect as many of the tokens, which appear in the Oxford Mail every day, until Monday, July 16, as they can.

Anyone associated with the school may collect the tokens whether they are parents, teachers or friends. At some point during the competition a special gold token will be printed which will be worth five normal tokens.

The number of tokens will be weighted against the number of pupils at each school to give each application a fair chance of winning. Work for the successful application will be carried out during the summer holidays.

In tomorrow’s Oxford Mail we will revisit St Nicholas Primary School and its plans.