Education: `Most dilapidated school' wins share of pounds 37m fund

A crumbling primary school, once dubbed the most dilapidated in Britain, yesterday learned it is among 200 schools to share in pounds 37m released by the Government for repairs and renewal.

The Independent reported earlier this year how staff and parents at Weeting Primary in Norfolk lobbied their local MP, the then secretary of state for education and employment, Gillian Shephard, to act over the condition of the thatched schoolhouse and surrounding mobile classrooms, where the children have to attend classes wrapped in anoraks during the winter.

Norfolk County Council will be able to spend almost pounds 1m on building a replacement school, the schools minister Stephen Byers announced yesterday.

The Ridings School in Halifax, briefly shut down amid a discipline crisis last autumn, will also receive a pounds 650,000 handout to fund an arts suite. The poor standard of the school's buildings had been blamed as a factor in its troubles.