Six schools will share a £360,000 grant to improve dining facilities.
But Bramhall High School has been awarded three-quarters of the cash to build a dining room extension.
Heatons South councillor Owen Breen has hit out at the Schools Forum for awarding funds – intended to encourage children in deprived areas to eat school meals – to one of the most affluent areas in the borough.
He said: "Awarding Bramhall 75 per cent of this grant so they can essentially build a new glass restaurant doesn’t comply with the government’s or the council’s priorities.
"The council’s top priority is to improve the health of our young people in the most deprived areas by increasing uptake of school meals. It seems as though something has gone seriously wrong."
St Winifred’s Primary School, in Heaton Mersey, had its £100,000 bid rejected after the forum decided insufficient information had been provided to complete the bid.
Five other schools are set to receive a share of £90,000.
Bramhall High will spend its £272,000 on a conservatory-style extension which its headteacher said is long overdue.
Headteacher John Peckham said: "Lunchtime facilities are our top priority at the moment.
"We simply do not have enough space in our dining room for all the children at Bramhall. We can only seat 170 children out of 1,320 at any one time.
"We’re even struggling for space for children to eat sandwiches.
"There are a million and one grants we can’t apply for because Bramhall isn’t a deprived area but our facilities are woefully inadequate and our children have just as much right to eat in comfort as children anywhere else.
"We didn’t decide to award us the grant over anybody else, we just applied for what we felt we needed. We’re still going to be short and are going to have to raise funds ourselves."
The funding is part of the government’s Million Meals Campaign, which aims for a million more children to take up school meals by the end of 2010 in a bid to ‘improve the health, well-being and potential of pupils’ and reduce obesity and subsequent long-term health problems that are especially associated with more deprived areas.
It was awarded by Stockport’s School Forum, which says it distributed funds according to how schools had bid.
"The Schools Forum had an open process whereby all the schools in Stockport were invited to bid for what they felt they needed," said Schools Forum chairman Ian Roberts. "We were given information as to how meal take-up could be improved and distributed the money accordingly.
"All schools were given around 50 per cent of what they bid."
There are 65 out of 1,300 pupils from low-income families who are eligible for free school meals at Bramhall High and all of those take them up.
At Reddish Vale, which received £58,000, 350 pupils are entitled to free school meals and 259 children take them up.
Stockport MP Ann Coffey said: "Stockport has been given the red flag for failing to tackle inequalities in the borough. It’s hardly surprising when they give the lion’s share of a grant to one of the richest parts of the borough."
Bramhall and Cheadle Hulme have the highest life expectancy in the borough at 84 years, compared to Brinnington where a newborn baby can expect to live to 73.
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Portuguese Man of War, The Mother Country (24/02/2010 at 15:13)
"We will need to match fund this grant, meaning that the overall project will be more than £1/2 million."
This is followed up later with;
"A lot of work now needs to start, planning, discussing and preparing for building work to take place this summer holiday. We will also need to begin a major fundraising effort to help find some of the £273,000 that the school will need to invest in the project."
So do the school get the money first, or does the grant not get handed over until the fundraising has reached its target? I suspect the former, as raising £273K before the summer is a tall order even for a school of that size.
Even so, I can see how this has caused upset and anger among those schools which do not rely so much on being a self-congratulatory publicity machine as Bramhall High, but instead struggle to survive at the bottom of the chain. The share BHS have been allocated does seem unreasonably disproportionate.
blizzard, derbyshire (26/02/2010 at 19:45)
MPs gravy train, UK (27/02/2010 at 00:30)
kimsback, stockport (01/03/2010 at 16:21)
Mother Brown, Hazel Grove (10/03/2010 at 17:49)
Just because the school is in an affluent area shouldn't mean that the pupils should literally have nowhere to eat their lunch, the situation is dire and we are having to have a 'whip round' as Blizzard puts it. The question is why should I (or any other current parent) have to fund the dining experience for generations to come? Plus I don't think we do get all the money up front - and yes it is a tall order for us to raise the additional funds which is probably why we were given the grant by people who had the facts to hand.
Having a go at the head teacher’s salary also is a tad unfair - all teachers receive a salary based on their position and experience and there is an upper limit - 90% less than that suggested by Blizzard. But again, why should he use his own money to improve a school that he manages? Do office workers buy their own chairs, bus drivers their own tyres etc?
Avondale School was dropped and rebuilt - how much do you think that cost? Different things get priority at different times - for a change we have actually been given some money for something we desperately need.
blizzard, Midlands (18/03/2010 at 21:49)
The "dining experience" is a sheer luxury.
Get real.