Fresh look at how Walsall's Joseph Leckie Academy is changing

The three-storey building is emerging at the Joseph Leckie Academy site in Walstead Road West, Delves.

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 is going up near the Colin Beilby building which was finished just six years ago.

The school had been battling for investment for several years.

Money had originally been allocated under the Labour Government's Building Schools for the Future programme which was scrapped in 2010. No further construction has taken place since then.

Walsall Council gave the go-ahead to the revamp earlier this year. Concerns had been raised over the loss of trees to make space for the building. With a brook running through the site, there was also an issue with the lack of an updated flood assessment. The plan was passed subject to a new flood survey.

The school bid for a further £4m from the government's education funding agency to provide further facilities including a sixth form, more business, ICT and computing classrooms, dining and administrative areas but the application was turned down in April.

The decision not to grant the funding was met with fury by Labour councillors Allah Ditta and Valerie Vaz who had campaigned for the money.

The school has continued to thrive despite the state of the buildings. In August it celebrated its best ever A-level pass rate of 99 per cent and last month(OCT) the mathematics faculty achieved the fourth best maths results in the whole of Walsall.

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

The construction work is due to be completed in March 2016.