STATE Secondary Wheatley Park School is making an ambitious bid to become Oxfordshire's first specialist arts school.

If successful, the new status as a centre of excellence would mean an extra £500,000 for the school over the next three years.

The school at Holton, near Wheatley, already has a thriving arts curriculum, including a state-of-the-art media unit and a strong emphasis on visual and performance arts.

Headteacher Nicholas Young said: "We believe it would recognise what we're doing already.

"We have an arts centre with a media unit within it and we have lots of arts related courses for pupils at GCSE level. "We're incredibly keen to share our facilities with the community."

Pupils from the school, which has more than 1,400 pupils, are regularly involved in the student radio station, Oxygen FM, while musicians from the school recently performed in Oxford's French twin town, Grenoble.

To qualify for specialist status, the school would have to raise £100,000 itself through sponsorship. The rest of the cash would come from the Government.

Oxfordshire already has a number of specialist schools which qualify for extra money. Peers School, Littlemore, St Birinus School, Didcot, and Banbury School are technology colleges while Didcot Girls School is a specialist language school.

A parent governor at Wheatley Park, Sue Hales, whose 17-year-old son Nick is a pupil, said: "It's a considerable amount of money and it will enable us to provide better facilities."

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