CHRISTMAS has come early for a Southampton school after it won more than £1.5 million for a new music, art and sports block.

St George Catholic School for Boys, in Swaythling, has had to make do for years with cramp-ed music and art rooms and inadequate sports facilities that restrict the curriculum.

But now work will begin designing a new purpose-built sports and arts block after the school's bid to the Department for education and Employment won approval.

Headteacher Helen Knight said: "It is a really good Christ-mas present for the school. Inadequate facilities in the past have meant that already very hard-working teachers have had to work even harder to make up for poor accommodation.

"The new building will enable us to extend the opportunities for boys to do creative and expressive art, which is really important for their education.

"The next stage is to decide on the design of the new building. Features we would like it to have include a dedicated ceramics room, a suite of music practice rooms and a sports hall that the whole community can use."

The school will receive £25,000 for architects' plans to be drawn up and £1,584,000 for building works will be released by the DfEE once a design brief is approved. The Portsmouth Catholic Diocese will provide a further £280,000.

Inspectors who visited the 690-pupil school last May found limited facilities curbed delivery of the curriculum in music, art and physical education and impacted on standards.

Mrs Knight said lack of a covered outdoor area limited the amount of gymnastics the school could offer, and the size of rooms made it difficult to develop performance work in music and impossible to do ceramics or large-scale sculpture.

The funding is part of £161m for major building work in voluntary aided church schools across England for the financial year starting in April next year. The new building is due to be completed by January 2002.