A SPECIALIST educational facility credited with turning round the lives of disaffected teenagers is set to close.

The Work Place was hailed as a groundbreaking project when set up by Didcot Girls School in 2005 to help poorly performing students from local schools.

Many of them had refused to attend lessons or were threatened with exclusion.

The Milton Park Centre, run by Didcot Girls School, trains Year 11 pupils a year, spending three days a week building up basic skills, and two days doing work experience with a local employer. It currently has 10 pupils.

Now the two permanent members of staff have been told there is no more funding and the centre will close, despite a new Government drive to promote vocational training.

Parents of pupils past and present have spoken out, saying the facility transformed lives. Jean Ingram, 42, of Mendip Heights, Didcot, said her daughter Naomi, 15, was set to go to college in September because of the Work Place.

She said: “My daughter was a bit of a naughty girl at school, but as soon as she got into the Work Place she completely changed.

“She has turned her life around. She is more positive, co-operates more, and is doing really well.

“I think it is a really, really good place for problem students. They should keep it open.”

Karen Knott’s daughter Kayleigh, 16, has enrolled at King Alfred’s Community and Sports College sixth form, after studying last year at the Work Place.

She said: “She was threatened with expulsion and not interested in any work whatsoever. She was disruptive, refusing to go to lessons.

“The Work Place gave her motivation and confidence, and she has now gone on to sixth form. She was really putting in effort.

“The staff there are absolutely brilliant. I think people really benefit from it.”

Much of the curriculum at the Work Place is aimed at steering pupils away from unemployment, teenage pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, and towards getting qualifications in English, maths and IT so they can go to college or work when they leave.

Didcot Girls School’s acting headteacher Fernand Dierckens said the school was looking at whether its services could be better offered on the school’s main campus.

He said: “The whole thing is going through a process at management level. I don’t feel anyone is really in a position to say anything about it at all until that process has been gone through.”

He said the facility was focussed at students struggling to get good GCSEs, rather than those suffering discipline problems.

He said: “The perceptions of the Work Place have always been all wrong. It is not about behaviour.

“It was an initiative of my predecessor as headteacher to offer something different.

“It was not about exclusion, but providing opportunities for young people. Any decision will be taken in the interests of young peoples’ education.”