Damning new report on Strule Campus

A MAJOR new report into the future of education in the north has made a series of damming recommendations in relation to the planned Strule Education Campus in Omagh.

The Independent Review of Education has been officially released this afternoon.

Some of its most damning comments are reserved for the Strule Campus, which has been in the planning for over a decade. To date, according to the report, more than £45 million has been spent on the project. Only the Arvalee School and Resource Centre has so far been completed.

SDLP West Tyrone MLA, Daniel McCrossan, said he was ‘highly concerned’ at the suggestion by the Report that the Strule Shared Education Campus should not go ahead.

“This project has already been beset by far too many delays and any suggestion that it should not go ahead as planned is deeply unhelpful. The re-allocation of this money is a non-starter and the campus must be built as promised,” he said.

The report describes the Campus on the site of the former Lisanelly Army barracks as ‘unaffordable’ and calls for the funding allocated to it to be re-directed to other education capital projects.

“We have concluded that the Strule Project is unaffordable,” the Review states.

“If new capital is not provided to meet Strule costs, the only alternative means of delivering the project is to devote the vast majority of the capital budget to Strule, which in turn would mean drastic reductions in other capital spend on education.”

The report goes on to claim that the ‘sharing element’ in Strule appears to be limited, and that each of the five transferring schools will remain largely as at present, offering the same curriculum in five separate new schools.