Pictured: New multi-million pound teaching block at Walsall school

The three-storey block will be built at Joseph Leckie Academy, with work expected to start in April, ahead of completion in March next year.

The secondary school had been battling for investment at the site off Walstead Road West, Delves, for a several years years and missed out when the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was scrapped in 2010.

But it has now been awarded almost £3.5m for the teaching block, which will have more than 20 classrooms with modern technologies from then.

It has also bid for a further £4m from the Education Funding Agency to provide further facilities including a sixth form, more business, ICT and computing classrooms, dining and administrative areas.

The school made national headlines more than 10 years ago when a pupil presented a dossier to former schools minister Stephen Twigg showing the state of the school and the need for improvements during a visit to the House of Lords.

Headteacher Keith Whittlestone said: "It is excellent news, it is something we have been campaigning for a long time. It will be a modern building which will enable us to move teaching and learning on."

The new build will replace part of the main teaching block which dates back more than 70 years at the east end of the school.

It will be constructed near the Colin Beilby building which was finished in 2009.

No further construction has taken place since the BSF programme was axed.

The school became an academy in 2012 and currently has 1,200 pupils and 300 sixth form students.

A supporting document to the planning application for the new building said: "The building will provide twenty-one classrooms within a three storey, new-build teaching block situated to the north of the existing school site.

"The accommodation provided will replace outmoded and inefficient teaching space within the existing school which will be mothballed with a view to future demolition."