THE Prescot School will see its open plan areas converted into traditional classrooms after an agreement on funding the work was reached.

The Knowsley Lane school has agreed to fund half the cost of converting their open plan “homebases” into classrooms, finishing a project that started in 2017.

The Lord Derby in Huyton is also undergoing works.

The other 50 per cent of costs will be funded by Knowsley Council, which has already put up £1.6m to convert open plan areas into classrooms at the borough’s other secondary schools. Teachers at those schools have seen behaviour and attainment improve “significantly” as a result, according to a council report.

Completing the project is expected to cost the council between £650,000 and £725,000, with the work being carried out at the two remaining schools over the 2021 summer holidays.

The work should provide each school with six classrooms, replacing the four “homebase” areas they currently have, and providing the “segregation” necessary to maintain year group bubbles within the school and limit COVID-19 transmission.

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Like the other new secondary schools built in Knowsley in 2009 under the Building Schools for the Future Programme, Prescot had huge open plan teaching areas instead of classrooms.

The design of the seven new schools, which cost £157m under a private finance initiative (PFI) contract, had been based on a study that said children in Knowsley were “kinaesthetic learners” and would benefit from non-traditional classrooms.

However, the open plan schools proved to be a disaster with high levels of truancy, misbehaviour and disruption and yet more money had to be spent on dividing up the open plan areas into more normal classrooms.

The spending has been a success, however.

A council report on the plans for Prescot and Lord Derby said: “As you will be aware significant capital expenditure has been made within the PFI buildings to remove the open plan spaces and provide more traditional teaching spaces. 

“Head teachers have commented that this is significantly improving attainment and behaviour within the schools.”

But the PFI schools continue to be expensive, costing the public more than £30m a year and putting the total price tag for the schools at around £750m by the time the contract ends in 2032.

A Knowsley Council spokesperson said: “Knowsley Council has now provided funding for all of the secondary schools in the borough to help them to carry out remodelling work to improve their classroom spaces.”

Prescot School was contacted by the LDRS for comment for this story.