PUPILS will be gifted with warmer and more welcoming facilities as their school gets a long-awaited makeover.

Rose Hill Primary School in Oxford will be given £1.3m worth of building improvements by the River Learning Trust, which took it over one year ago.

The overhaul began in half term and will see draughty doors, a leaking roof and worn-out flooring finally become a thing of the past.

The school's headteacher Sue Vermes said: "It will be great to have these things replaced and I'm hoping we can access extra funding for the toilets and redecoration.

"Some of the windows are really very old and you can hardly see out of them, so it will be lovely to make the place lighter."

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The River Learning Trust secured funding for the work from the Department for Education and will also deliver other improvements such as new lighting and bike sheds.

Rose Hill was forced to become an academy after being placed in special measures by Ofsted, but struggled to find an academy trust that was willing to take it on due to much-needed repairs.

It has was reinspected by the regulator in 2017, gaining 'good' ratings in most areas and 'requires improvement' overall.

Ms Vermes said: "It took us a long long time to find a sponsor because the building obviously needed so much investment.

"Lots of old doors are going to be replaced and windows, as some are really draughty.

"Over £1m feels like a really decent investment."

In 2015 pupils from the school wrote to the then-Prime Minister asking for cash to repair the school building, delivering to 10 Downing Street in person.

READ AGAIN: Rose Hill pupils visit Downing Street to lobby for building repairs

The school's head said there was a time when some of the draughts meant children were cold during the school day, even while indoors, and that Oxfordshire County Council spent 'quite a lot of money' fixing the worst-affected areas to make pupils more comfortable.

Ms Vermes added: "They didn't have enough money to do the whole building.

"The roof still sometimes leaks and the floor coverings are really old and worn."

Years ago the school was promised a completely new building under Labour's Building Schools for the Future scheme, along with hundreds of others across the country.

The new coalition government scrapped the scheme in 2010, however, and Rose Hill Primary School was left to make do with its dilapidated buildings for almost another decade.

Ms Vermes said: "I bumped into a parent at the entrance the other day, who saw the contractors setting up and said how wonderful it was- she said the school had hardly changed since she went here, and was glad to see the work being done."

She said making sure the new doors and windows keep the heat in will also help the school to be more environmentally-friendly.

The school in The Oval teaches 309 pupils and is one of about 20 schools within the trust.

Scaffolding was put up during half term and it is hoped the work will be finished by the new academic year in September.