Richard Harker

Councillor Richard Harker, executive board member for education at Leeds City Council, said:  “The city council is pleased to provide this 21st  century learning environment which is providing our young people with skills, knowledge and experience for the best start to their adult lives. “Combined with the dedication of the teachers and support staff, pupils are already benefiting from these brilliant new facilities which will help them thrive and achieve great success in the future.”

The Prime Minister has officially opened Allerton High School 0n the 28.11.08. He described the school as ‘the most open, colourful and innovative school he’d seen for a number of years’. Gordon Brown MP was joined by Ed Balls MP, the Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families. He met young people and members of staff during the visit and saw first hand the benefits that BSF investment in schools is having on education in the city.

Allerton High, in Meanwood, was one of three new secondary schools opened in September as part of the £250m BSF project. The state-of-the-art building replaced cramped corridors, small classrooms and poor ICT resources with light, open spaces and anytime, anywhere ICT designed to be future-proof for many years.

Cllr Harker, also commented:  “The city council is committed to providing learning environments where every young person can be happy, healthy, safe and successful. Allerton High School is a unique learning environment and a testement to what the city council can achieve in partnership with others like Education Leeds.”

Features at the school include two purpose built drama studios, a covered external amphitheatre which can be used as a social space, a science terrace for external experiments and curriculum gardens. There are also faculty-based ‘breakout spaces’, two rooms fitted with sound and vision recording facilities, linked by an observatory, to enable sharing of good practice. Students with special education needs are also benefiting from a partnership with the North West Specialist Inclusive Learning Centre (SILC) and an on-site specialist autistic unit.

The school also has over 1,000 personal computer devices, including over 500 portables - laptops, ultra light laptops, Macbooks and special mini-books, a recording studio with an iMac suite, and PDAs, digital cameras, MP3 recorders, webcams, scanners and printers.