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        COWLEY LANGUAGE COLLEGE      

Cowley Language College is situated on Hard Lane in the Dentons Green district of St. Helens.  The school has a long and successful history in providing for secondary education in St. Helens having it's origins as one of the first Grammer schools in the borough and developing over the years into a Comprehensive High School.  Currently, Cowley is designated as a Specialist Language College catering for around 1200 pupils.  With the school's development and growth there has been a progressive development of the site resulting in a mixture of building ages and types.  The existing accommodation has a total area of 13,135 sq m including the sixth form provision contained on a single site across six separate buildings.

Initially funding of £15 million was secured to redevelop the Hard Lane site, and following an extensive selection process, Willmott Dixon were appointed as Partners .  However, it was quickly realised that the available funding would not provide the cutting edge flagship school that the Authority was striving towards, and subsequent bidding for Building Schools for the Future funding, alongside Local Authority funding, has secured a total of £21.5 million pounds.  There were also issues surrounding disruption to existing pupils whilst this development was ongoing, and the additional funding now allows for more scope to the project.  The current proposals are to develop the new school in 2 phases.

 Phase 1 - New build 11-16 school on the adjacent former Windlehurst Primary/Hurst Special School site.  Construction works have already begun on site and completion for this phase is targetted for September 2009.

 Phase 2 - Refurbishment and extension of Cowley Building to form 6th form and demolition of existing premises.