A quick update on Meadowgate Academy and the outstanding funding bid to replace the broken down boiler.
Meadowgate Academy previously wrote to me stating that without funding for an urgent capital bid, the Academy “is likely to close” for a period during the worst of the winter weather. It also said school meals would be affected, noting "this impacts the Air Handling Units, which doesn’t allow gas to the main kitchen, therefore no hot school dinners can be made. As 58% of our pupils are entitled to Free School Meals it does not allow the children to have a good lunchtime meal.”
After the urgent capital support bid was rejected by the Government earlier this year, I raised this case in Parliament and in response the Secretary of State for Education wrote to me to indicate she would look again at this request.
A further bid was then made by Meadowgate Academy in July and school leaders have been in close touch with the Department for Education in recent weeks.
We now expect an answer on this much needed funding next week. Provided it is successful, the work is likely to take around 16 weeks, so whilst some discomfort and inconvenience will remain this autumn we will hopefully have this fixed ahead of the worse of the winter weather in the new year, albeit it could and should have been done much sooner.
I will update further once we have confirmation of the funding decision next week.
