A SCHOOL is hoping to build a roof for an outdoor classroom with a little help from the Echo’s School Build Challenge.

Westfield Arts Centre is entering the make-over project – run between the Dorset Echo and construction company Leadbitter – in a bid to win an outdoor school make-over worth either £3,000, £2,000 or £1,000.

The project, which is open to all primary, middle and secondary schools in the Echo area, is all about encouraging learning, improving schools’ green credentials, promoting exercise and making the playground a more child-friendly place to be.

Westfield Arts Centre is an all-age special school for children with moderate and complex learning difficulties.

In 2009, it started a lunchtime gardening project to show the children where their food came from.

Since then it has gone from strength to strength, with the addition of a storytelling tent, a pond, fruit trees, and a decking performance and seating area.

Horticulture and drama teacher David James, who worked on the project with allotment site manager Martin Jones, said that the next stage of the project is to build a covered area which students can use as a covered classroom, all-year round. He said: “It would mean a phenomenal amount.

“It’s great because we are doing so much across the curriculum for all the students in the garden. It’s a major part of preparing for life outside school.”

The new roofed area would be used as an outdoor class room which should protect the children from the sun in the summer and rain in the winter.

Mr James said: “All we need is the roof to extend the project we have been building up for the last 18 months.”

He added: “If we just had part of the prize we could buy the materials and we could then build the shelter ourselves.”

Those wanting to be in with a chance to win should fill in the application form that you can find in the Echo, and tell us in no more than 200 words about your project, what it would involve and why you need it.

All applications need to be in by Friday, June 10. Then a judging panel will whittle the entrants down to the finalists before Dorset Echo readers decide the final three winning projects by a voucher collection system.