Primary school plagued by problems will be rebuilt

A school in Denton will finally get the rebuild it deserves after suffering more than 10 years of flooding, sewage leaks and no outdoor facilities.

The Russell Scott Primary School has been in a sorry state for years, with the site having to close to students on a number of occasions due to structural issues and flooding problems. The school even appeared on BBC Panorama in 2024 and revealed that teachers had to empty out buckets of water collected from leaks after it rained.

A disastrous multi-million-pound rebuild in 2015 left the school with flooding, fire safety defects and poor quality open space rendered unusable.
Carillion, the company contracted to carry out the repairs, left the 150-year-old school with a catalogue of new problems due to the poor and unfinished construction works carried out. The construction company went bankrupt in 2018, leaving the school with the mess they created.
Now headteacher Steve Marsland has expressed his delight after a vision to demolish the Clare Street site and replace it with a new state-of-the-art school has been approved by Tameside council’s planning panel. 

The proposal will see the shoddy building and unusable sports facilities replaced by a modern, eco-friendly school. Also included in the plans are a new playing pitch provision, capable of accommodating a 5v5 football pitch, and high quality Multi Use Games Area (MUGA).
Mr Marsland said: “It has been a long, hard road and it has taken intervention from MPs, BBC Panorama and media to get what we deserve.
“If this happened in a leafy suburb this would’ve happened a long time ago. It has taken a battle from the school and the community to get this funding.

“We will have a school worthy of Denton and its children. It is a shame children have had to experience sewage and other problems in the school.
“We still have sandbags at the ready in case of flooding. All these children have had to put up with so much.“This is the start of a new beginning. I have some fireworks ready for when we see the first digger.” The school was selected to benefit from the School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) in December 2022. Russell Scott got bumped up the priority list as a result of local campaigning, intervention from the former Denton MP Andrew Gwynne as well as media pressure, Mr Marsland explained.

Russell Scott currently caters for up to 472 pupils, but the rebuild won’t see the new school expand. The proposed new two-storey building will comprise classrooms, a nursery, a designated SEN unit, admin spaces, assembly hall, kitchen and other ancillary spaces.
The school, in conjunction with Tilbury Douglas and the Department for Education, ‘aspires to create a modern and sustainable education facility capable of meeting the diverse educational needs of its current and future pupils’.

To avoid placing pupils in temporary classrooms, the new school building will be constructed next to the existing one on the western part of the site. Once the new school is complete, pupils will then transfer across to the facility, allowing the demolition of the former school building to start at the end of the project. 

It is hoped building work can start later this year, with an estimated completion for the new school building by winter 2027. 
Mr Marsland has been a stalwart at Russell Scott and has stuck with the community through the tough times. He plans to retire once the new school is completed and the students are settled.