An Oxford upper school is to get a £1m sports hall after a ten-year wait, writes Madeleine Pennell.

Plans to reorganise schools in the city will mean Cheney School must expand to cater for 450 extra pupils. At the moment the 950-pupil school has two small gyms but no sports hall.

One of these has to be knocked down to create space for a new assembly hall and music rooms.

To compensate, Cheney will get the sports hall, which had been promised ten years ago but was put on the back burner because of budget cuts.

Oxfordshire County Council's education management sub-committee has given the scheme the go-ahead.

It will be funded out of a separate budget to the rest of the buildings included in the plans to abolish middle schools and replace them with primaries and secondaries by 2003, because it was planned so long ago.

Cheney School, in Cheney Lane, Headington, is to have four new buildings - more than any other school in Oxford. As well as the sports hall, there will be science laboratories, a design and technology area and the assembly hall.

Details are expected to go before city planners in April or May, so that building work can begin in September.

Glynis Wheatcroft, assistant head of Cheney, said: "This is really doing something that the education authority would have liked to do ten years ago. We are very short of indoor PE space. Something desperately needed to be done, so we are very pleased.

"This will obviously allow us to do a lot more sports. We will do basketball, volleyball and indoor cricket. It will widen education provision. The intention is that the community will be able to use the sports hall and weekends, evenings and the school holidays."