Announced as part of the Department for Education’s Condition Improvement Fund, the schools are among 1,030 across the nation to benefit from the £435m investment.
The fourteen Suffolk schools are set to get around £400,000 each, with the total Suffolk grant estimated to be around £5.6m.
Among those to benefit from the money are Holbrook Academy and East Bergholt High School, which will both use the money to make urgent roof repairs, and Debenham High School which is replacing a flat roof and expanding.
Other schools in the county will use the money to improve safety and security.
South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge, who has helped the schools lobby for the funding, said: “The key thing is these are schools which have very creative problems that they need capital funding.
“I visited the schools soon after I was elected and I raised this case with Dr Tim Coulson, the regional schools commissioner for East of England and North-East London.
“I am really pleased – people say there’s no capital funding but this proves there is.”
The announcement has been an important one for Dr Simon Letman, headteacher of Holbrook Academy, who said that funding for rural schools is getting harder.
“Every year we are invited to bid but there is more need than there are available resources, so it’s getting tougher and tougher to get this funding,” he said.
“The roof has been an issue now for the last five years, and we had to take some classrooms out of commission because of it.
“In the current economic climate it’s tremendous to get that level of financial support.”
With the winners of the grant funding having been announced, work can get underway to carry out the necessary repairs, with work expected to start later this year.
Published in the EADT.
