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St Louise's College wants new build as part of plan to admit boys

St Louise's will have its capacity reduced from 2,280 to 1,500 and will admit boys
St Louise's will have its capacity reduced from 2,280 to 1,500 and will admit boys St Louise's will have its capacity reduced from 2,280 to 1,500 and will admit boys

AN all-girls school sought a guarantee it would receive a new building as part of a proposal to allow it to admit boys.

Plans approved by the Department of Education will see three single-sex post-primary schools in west Belfast merged to form one new 1,000-pupil college.

The new school will be "in effect an amalgamation" involving St Rose's Dominican College for girls and Corpus Christi College and Christian Brothers' School (CBS) for boys.

The three schools will be "discontinued".

In addition, St Louise's Comprehensive College, once the largest school for girls in Europe, will admit boys. The Falls Road school will also have its capacity reduced from 2,280 to 1,500.

During the statutory two-month objection period on the published proposals, the department received just one response, from St Louise's.

While the governors said they supported the proposal, they highlighted related conditions and requests. They said they would not enter into an agreement in terms of changed designation without a development proposal for a new school on the present site.

Governors said they must be assured of a timeframe for building new school and that it should be in place before proposals could move forward for the wider area plan.

In the interim, they added, full facilities must be put in place to cater for phased integration of boys. This would include money to allow the conversion of toilets and changing rooms. To convert two existing toilet blocks would incur a cost of approximately £40,000.

The Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) said it intended to commence an application for a major capital scheme for the school, but only pending the outcome of the proposal to admit boys.

The department said it considered CCMS's actions to be "a realistic and reasonable approach", particularly given that any new build would have to be sought through an entirely separate process

Money for new building projects, however, is scarce.

In June 2014 the then education minister John O'Dowd announced a £170 million building programme. Work is under way at only one school, while four projects had not even made it to the design stage.