Work is about to start on the £19.3 million new shared school campus in Motherwell.

Councillor Jim McCabe, Leader of North Lanarkshire Council cut the first turf on the site at Milton Street on Wednesday 25 November. The campus will be home to the new Cathedral Primary School, Firpark ASN Primary School and Daisy Park Community Centre

It marks an important development in the council's latest school modernisation programme -Schools and Centres 21 - which will see £250 million spent on modernising school buildings and, where appropriate, incorporating new community facilities.

Councillor McCabe explained: "There are currently 10 campus projects underway across North Lanarkshire, including five secondary schools, five primary schools, three ASN (Additional Support Needs) schools, one nursery centre, two community centres and one cultural centre. The majority of these projects are new builds with some being a mixture of new build and full refurbishment.

"This new school campus will provide a first class learning environment for the pupils of Cathedral and Firpark primaries as well as a great new community facility for local people by the summer of 2011.

"We have an enviable track record of delivering new schools on time and on budget. Our previous school modernisation programme saw 24 new schools built across North Lanarkshire. I'm confident that this one will be every bit as successful."

The new campus is being built by Morgan Ashurst and Fergus Phillips, project manager, added: "It's always a very exciting time when work begins and we hope all the children, staff and community will continue to enjoy watching their school take shape over the coming months."

This is the second phase of development for the area's schools and follows on from the Education 2010 PPP programme.

Unlike the previous school building programme, which was paid for using a Public Private Partnership funding arrangement, all of the funding for Schools and Centres 21 comes directly from money the council has set aside for these improvements.

Here is what will be included in the new campus:

Cathedral Primary School and Nursery:

The new school consists of four main teaching zones, each containing an activity area and four or five class bases.

The total number of classrooms range from 16 to 20 and is dependent on the position of the innovative moveable walls which have been developed in order to facilitate different class size groupings.

Also included are three multi-function rooms, an interview room, staff room, staff resource room and administration / reception office exclusively for use by Cathedral Primary School.

A nursery wing with its own separate entrance, internal playroom, external protected play area and associated facilities is also included and this will accommodate up to 50 children.

Firpark ASN Primary School:

The new school will have 2 main teaching zones each containing six class bases and one activity zone. A soft play room, teaching kitchen, multi-function room, physiotherapy room, music room and a number of areas for visiting and support services, including language therapy, are included.

A major feature will be the teaching pool which is specially designed to meet the needs of the Firpark pupils. There will be a separate dedicated administration / reception office, staff room and staff resource area.

Shared Facilities:

The schools will share dining facilities, a library, an audio-visual room, a large assembly hall that can be divided by the use of a motorised partition into two full size gyms, changing facilities and an external full size floodlit all weather synthetic pitch.

These sports facilities and the other school facilities will be open to the community for lets out-with school hours. The playground areas will also be shared. The whole building will be wired with network cable that can accommodate the continuing development of ICT, wireless network provision, the use of laptops and interactive whiteboard provision.

Daisy Park Community Centre:

This will have a separate entrance and foyer to the school, a main hall, two meeting rooms, a caretaker office and changing facilities to supplement the school changing facilities for the external all-weather 3G floodlit pitch.

These facilities, though integrated within the overall building, will be completely separate from the school facilities and will therefore operate as a stand alone community centre open during daytime and evenings.