PRIMARY school pupils took their fight for better classrooms to Downing Street yesterday as they delivered letters to the Prime Minister.
Rose Hill Primary School headteacher Sue Vermes and 24 children travelled to London to deliver the handwritten letters which asked David Cameron to improve their school building.
The pupils wrote the letters after it emerged Oxfordshire County Council does not have enough money to replace all the windows in the school.
Yesterday afternoon, five of the 24 Year Five pupils who travelled to London with Ms Vermes went to the door of 10 Downing Street with teacher Peter Mallam delivering their letters to Mr Cameron, the MP for Witney.
Ms Vermes said: “It went really well.
“The kids had a really wonderful day. By chance we turned up for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and we walked past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.
“A lot of the children had not been to London before.
“The kids sat through three weeks when it was so cold they could not concentrate last winter.
“They handed over 25 letters today because one child was not able to make it due to illness.
“I hope that somebody will be able to find a bit of extra cash to fix the windows.”
In February the Oxford Mail revealed pupils had been forced to wear coats, hats and scarves as temperatures in some classrooms fell below the legal limit of 18C.
Pupils had to endure the conditions due to a lack of modern insulation in the Key Stage 2 part of the school, which only had single-glazed windows.
This put strain on the boiler and caused the heating bills to rocket to more than £3,000 a month, according to the school.
Oxfordshire County Council was given £400,000 to replace the roofs of the classrooms in the Key Stage 2 area.
But the money will only allow windows in two out of the 12 classroom to be replaced.
Earlier this month Ms Vermes said it would cost another £200,000 to replace all the windows in the old part of the school.
One of the letters was written by 10-year-old Shannon Barrett.
She wrote: “Dear David Cameron, Our school building is underfunded, unsafe and falling apart.”
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