SCHOOL bosses are preparing to launch a second bid for £11million of private cash to rejuvenate St Wilfrid's High School, Blackburn.

School governors, Blackburn Diocese and council officials are discussing new moves to secure a Private Finance Initiative.

PFI was pioneered under the last Conservative government, and is now an accepted means of funding public sector projects, including rebuilding work on hospitals, prisons, roads and schools.

For schools, PFI means buildings would be leased from the private sector over 20 to 65 years.

St Wilfrid's has recently come back under Blackburn with Darwen Council control after having been a grant-maintained school. In March, an Ofsted report labelled the school buildings a health and safety hazard for pupils, so an initial PFI bid was made, but it failed to get approval in July.

Governors had even looked at leaving the present Byrom Street and Duckworth street sites and moving out of Blackburn to solve their problems.

teaching unions criticised the initial bid, saying a scheme to involve businesses in funding the work would end with profit being made from education budgets.

Peter Morgan, Blackburn with Darwen Council's assistant director of education, said: "St Wilfrid's needs considerable investment, and it would be more cost effective to replace all the buildings and rebuild the school on a single site.

"We have held an exploratory meeting with the governing body and the Blackburn Diocese to examine ways of preparing a second PFI bid, which would be submitted in 18 months to two years time." Head Linda Robinson said: "The school is committed to providing a learning environment which is appropriate to our being a specialist technology college. "Our present buildings are inappropriate for teaching and learning and any investment to repair them is not really an option in the long term.

"The meeting we held was purely exploratory, and we are grateful for the support from the LEA and the Blackburn Diocese."

Councillor Bill Taylor, deputy leader and chairman of Blackburn with Darwen Council's education and training committee, said: "Every single school in the borough has had a thorough inspection and all are in a state of disrepair, from leaking roofs to rotting windows.

"The needs of St Wilfrid's need to be addressed now and it's a question of how we prioritise it."

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