Stirling Council and Stirling Gateway Ltd, a consortium of local companies, have now signed contracts for the £100 million deal to build four new high schools, a community campus and extend and refurbish a fifth high school.
The four brand new high schools will replace the current Dunblane, St Modan's, Stirling and Wallace High Schools. The community campus in Raploch includes two primary schools, a school for children with special needs, a nursery, a range of community facilities and further education hospitality and hair and beauty suites. McLaren High School in Callander will also be fully refurbished and substantially extended as part of the project.
Speaking after the contract signing Councillor John Hendry, Convenor of Stirling Council’s Economy Committee said, “The level of investment this Council is making in future generations is unprecedented. We are showing the lead in Scotland in providing modern, stimulating and innovative learning and teaching facilities for children and young people. As well as this the community will also be able to use these new facilities, providing them with a first class community resource as well as an inspiring environment for education.”
David Spiller, Managing Director of Gateway PFI and Director of Stirling Gateway Ltd said, “Providing these new schools from our base in Stirling is a matter of great pride and we hope that these state of the art facilities will meet all the expectations of the local communities that they serve.”
Work is now underway on most of the sites to make sure the schools are opened on time during late 2007 and 2008. The first to be ready will be Raploch Community Campus, on Drip Road, with work beginning in the next few weeks. The community facilities will be open by October 2007 and the school will be ready by Christmas 2007.
The contractor on the community campus is Ogilvie Construction. Duncan Ogilvie, Chairman of Gateway Schools consortium and Chief Executive of Ogilvie Groups said, “I am particularly pleased that we are the contractor for Raploch Campus, providing a state of the art facility both for the local children and for the community to use in the best way possible. Raploch is working towards an exciting regeneration and the community campus will hopefully be the start of greater things to come.”
Work on the new Dunblane High School has already started with a new access road being created. Construction of the building starts in mid-May and the new steel frame will be visible by August 2006, with the school ready for occupation by November 2007.
Wallace High School is being relocated to a new site on Airthrey Road where work has already begun to redirect gas and electricity mains. The construction of the new school begins during May with an opening date of February 2008.
It will be July this year before any visible work begins on the new Stirling High with the school opening its doors by February 2008.
Construction of St Modans High School, which is moving to a brand new site at Forthbank will get underway in late 2006 with completion by July 2008 and the school welcoming new students in August.
A rolling programme of construction and refurbishment will take place at McLaren High in Callander with the first classrooms ready by Easter 2007 and the school fully complete by August 2008.
Chair of Children’s Services Councillor Colin Finlay commented on the project saying, “These new schools will enable a change in the way children and young people learn and give teachers the opportunity to practice new ways of working. These truly are state of the art, tailor made facilities meeting the needs of each school and its wider community. Teachers and pupils have been involved in the design process and will be just as involved in the construction process as well. Not only that, the schools have been designed to be energy efficient which fits well with our ethos of promoting green schools and the green flag scheme.“
Local companies AL King, FES and Ogilvie Construction are partners in Stirling Gateway Ltd, the consortium who won the bid to build and refurbish the schools. Ogilvies will build the Raploch campus and Dunblane, Stirling and St Modan’s High Schools. AL King will build the new Wallace High School and extend and refurbish McLaren High School.
FES will take over the running and the maintenance of the schools upon completion with the exception of McLaren High where handover takes place on 3rd July this year. All school cleaning and janitorial staff from Stirling Council will transfer under TUPE agreement to FES FM upon the handover of the schools.
FES are involved with some of the largest contracts all over the UK.
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