Sporting developments at Cloughwood (From Northwich Guardian)

Sporting developments at Cloughwood

3:43pm Thursday 13th September 2012 in News By Gina Bebbington

AN EXCITING year has started at a Hartford school which hopes to have new £250,000 sports facilities by the end of March.

Cloughwood School, in Stones Manor Lane, has been awarded £133,221 from the Lottery funded Sport England scheme People, Places Play, inspired by London 2012.

The school is match funding the windfall and will use the total to build a floodlit all-weather pitch and new changing facilities, which it will also open up to sports clubs and the wider community.

Headteacher Adrian Larkin said: “We’re a special school and the difficulty special schools have is that they can be isolated in the community.

“Our students come from all over Cheshire West and Cheshire East and some from further a field so the difficulty for ourselves and others is how to create a community atmosphere in a school that’s not necessarily students who live in the local community.

“After five years of focussed school improvement work we thought one of the major areas to look at is to place the school more in the local community.

“All the students need to know they can make a contribution to the community and be part of it.

“This funding means we can bring the community more into school at the same time as developing sporting facilities for our students.”

During school hours Mr Larkin plans to invite pupils from Cheshire’s other special schools to use the facilities.

At evenings and weekends the facilities will be open to the community.

“I think we will be inundated – we did a survey and there was plenty of interest in the facility,” He said.

“In school the kids love the idea, they’re absolutely over the moon.”