Offenders provide much-needed maintenance to Burghfield St Mary's Primary School

A primary school has been offering unpaid work to local offenders to improve its facilities.

Burghfield St Mary's Primary School welcomed its first team to paint its corridors and Year 3 and 4 classrooms on February 25 as part of its Community Payback Project.

And the probation service has now agreed to send a team every fortnight to continue work on the rest — with another team visiting at the weekend.

Deputy headteacher Matt Lappin said: “We are a small village school with only one-form entry, totalling 190 children.

“As a result of our small size, we have an equally small school budget.

“This means we are not able to afford a caretaker and the site management, maintenance and upkeep are done by the headteacher and myself.

“Our school has been in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.

“This is extremely upsetting as our community relies on us to educate their children in a clean and aesthetically pleasing environment.”

But the new project means manual labour is provided to the school, at no cost.

The team will then work on the school grounds over the summer months.

Mr Lappin continued: “We feel very passionately about reparation via unpaid work, as it provides people with a constructive means to repair the harm caused by their involvement in offending and supports the strengthening of relationships within communities.

“Our school is a central hub of the Burghfield community, so we feel that we can play our part in building a stronger and safer community for the children that we teach.”

The school is responsible for providing all of the paint and equipment required.

It had neither, so staff reached out to local companies for donations and received “overwhelming responses”.

Dulux Decorating Centre, in Reading, led the way donating £250 of paint, followed by Brewers Reading West and Homebase, Basingstoke.

The school is also in the process of receiving donations from Paintwell, in Reading.

Donations have come in the form of rollers, roller handles, brushes, paint trays, buckets, scuttles and sheets.

Pupils will also be having a ‘Paint Day’ in the coming weeks where each child will donate a brush, roller, sheet of sandpaper or paint sheet.

They will engage in painting activities all-day, wearing their own clothes, and their donations will be used by the probation team in the months that follow.