Funding bonanza

All were included in the latest round of prizes announced by the Department for Education and Skills today.

Witton Park High School, in Blackburn, will now be known as Witton Park Business and Enterprise College and will receive £100,000 in capital funding to extend its business studies area and £130,000 each year for four years .

The good news comes after it won £50,000 under the Enterprise Pathfinder scheme to develop lessons for Year 10 pupils at Witton Park, St Bedes, Darwen Vale and Beardwood high schools.

Blackburn with Darwen Council's business partner, Capita, contributed £32,000 to the bid and has already offered

mentoring support and incentives for students taking part in enterprise-related activities.

Around £500,000 in extra funding will also go to St Christopher's High School over the next four years. The newly designated specialist technology centre aims to provide computers in every classroom.

Funding will start in September and there will also be £150,000 to build a new IT room. The school raised £56,000 in a matter of days to back the bid.

It is the latest boost to the school, in Queens Road West, Accrington. Specialist schools get extra funding from the Government to provide centres of excellence for particular subjects.

In October, it was awarded £2.5million to build new sports hall, library and resource area, performing arts and art suites and a common room. The school also has plans to reintroduce A-level study in the borough in the former Moorhead High School building next door, which was targeted by arsonists last year.

Headteacher Alisdair Coates, who travelled to Whitehall in September with an empty suitcase to demand more cash for the area's schools, said: "My suitcase floweth over."

Building work will begin on the sports hall and IT centre in September.

St Hilda's and St Theodore's high schools, in Burnley, were also among the latest crop of specialist school awards for humanities and sport respectively.