New St Patrick’s Opened After £7 million Rebuild
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The £7 million St Patrick’s Primary in Greenock features 12 classrooms, an open plan library, assembly/gym hall and a soft play area.
Education Vice Convener Councillor Martin Brennan who officially opened the new school said: “It is a real pleasure to be able to mark the start of a new chapter in the story of St Patrick’s Primary. This is a fantastic new building and one that provides the best possible educational environment and facilities for staff and pupils. We have made education our number one priority and the majority of our children and young people are now benefitting from some of the best facilities in Scotland.”
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St Patrick’s spent 15 months in temporary accommodation at the former Sacred Heart Primary while their new building was being built.
Head Teacher Kirsteen Doherty said: “It was a real privilege to see the faces of the children and parents when they saw inside the new building for the first time. Everyone has been very impressed and we all have our favourite parts - mine is the library with the picture window looking out to the River Clyde. It is a truly inspirational building for the children to learn in and we all feel uplifted. I would like to thank my staff and everyone involved in the project for their hard work. St Patrick’s has a new home that generations of children will benefit from and can be hugely proud of.”
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& Communities Convener Councillor Terry Loughran said: “We are continuing to deliver some of the best facilities in the country and we have committed ourselves to completing the programme five years early by 2020. “There can be few councils in Scotland, indeed in Britain, who can say they have invested more than a quarter of a billion pounds in their schools estate. Opening new schools is almost becoming a habit for us as we deliver a package of new and refurbished buildings giving our children and young people exciting and special places to learn.”
The original St Patrick’s building was initially earmarked for refurbishment as part of Inverclyde Council’s £270 million schools estate programme delivering new or refurbished schools across the area. However, the Council recognised the cost of building a new school at the same site could be around £100,000 less than a refurbishment because of the greater amount of Government funding that would become available - £3.4 million from the Scottish Government’s Scotland’s Schools for the Future programme managed by the Scottish Futures Trust.
Gemma Boggs, Schools Programme Director at the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) said: “I am delighted to see another Scotland's Schools for the Future school open. St Patricks Primary School is an inspiring building from which pupils and teachers alike will benefit from a first class learning environment. Inspired by our Reference Primary School, Inverclyde Council is now reaping the benefits of the ground-breaking and adaptable design which was created to provide councils with a cost-effective and flexible design which is better suited for modern ways of teaching and learning. I hope the whole community can benefit from this fantastic new facility."
The new £7 million St Patrick’s Primary in Greenock has been completed along with the £4.4 million refurbishment of Kilmacolm Primary.
Inverclyde Council is pressing ahead with its plans to build a new £9 million building for St Ninian’s on the former blaes gravel pitches at the current school site.
Other projects under development include the £5.1 million refurbishment of Moorfoot Primary in Gourock and the £3.8 million refurbishment of Lady Alice Primary in Greenock.
A new £2.5 million early years facility to replace the existing Kelly Street Children’s Centre and Nursery in Greenock is also in the pipeline.