ENTHUSIASTIC young pupils are helping to build for the future by overseeing construction work of their school brick by brick.

The 52 youngsters at St George's School, Westhoughton, could not be better positioned to keep an eye on the building of their new nursery.

While the £132,000 structure is being built, the building's prospective young occupants are situated alongside the site in a temporary portable classroom.

And although the thought of working from a portable classroom may not be ideal, teachers are determined to turn it to their advantage.

Because of delays in building the nursery, it is not expected to be finished until Christmas and as a result the temporary building was installed.

Head teacher, Mr Simon Bramwell explained: "The Government policy to put infants into teaching groups of less than 30 impacted on us in that as a popular and oversubscribed school we did not meet the DfEE criteria for reducing our admission number to 30 from our current level of 34.

"After discussions with the Governing body and the LEA we were able to apply for a grant for a new classroom under the class size initiative. The geography of the school meant that the most practical option was to build a self-contained nursery and convert the existing nursery into a teaching area for Key Stage One.

"This has greatly benefited the infants where although we still have registration groups of 34 all our teaching takes place in smaller groups averaging 26 with some as low as 22.

"The new nursery is being built with a grant of £132,000 from the DfEE.

"It will be a great development for all our children. Not only will we have brand new state of the art nursery facilities, but our infant children are already benefiting from our smaller streamed teaching groups.

"The nursery children are really enjoying watching the building grow. The children are doing a project on building, and are watching as each brick is put in place from their temporary accommodation.

"The building contractors have been excellent, bringing in tools to the classroom, talking to the children and allowing them site visits under the strictest health and safety code."