A PRIMARY school is celebrating a grant worth more than £230,000 to improve its buildings.

Waddington and West Bradford Church of England Primary has been awarded a £231,000 Local Authority Co-Ordinated Voluntary Aided Programme (LCVAP) grant.

Staff will use the money to build a new classroom, an ICT suite, and a new staff room.

The current staff room will be replaced by a library and quiet area.

The LCVAP grants are given exclusively to church and voluntary aided schools to assist with their building costs.

Coun Alan Whittaker, the county council's former executive member for education said: "To earn this grant, the school would have needed to present a strong case to show that building works would have needed to have been done to the school, or that numbers of pupils are rising "I am very happy that they have earned it."

Under the terms of the grant, school governors must contribute 10 per cent of project costs.

To help meet this, the school have announced they will launch a sponsor a brick' scheme to raise money.

Several virtual bricks from the building will be available to sponsor, with prices starting from £5 each.

The school hopes the low starting price will encourage both families, and local businessmen to contribute to the scheme, which is similar to the one being used to help fund the Clitheroe Mosque project.

Local Authorities in England are set to award more than £202 million in LCVAP grants this year, and Lancashire County Council make up a high proportion of this.

They will award more than £10 million to schools in the county this year.

Although government money awarded to schools under this scheme is earmarked for building improvements, earlier this year, government teaching body Teachernet recomm-ended the grant also be used for healthy school meals.