East Bridgwater headteacher describes a gloomy toilet block with 14 cubicles to serve all the school's 600 or so female pupils
Two rusting metal boxes sit among the buildings of East Bridgwater community school. They are disused shipping containers but on closer inspection turn out to have doors. Here, they are being used as a classroom and changing room.
Across the town of Bridgwater, at Penrose special school, the hand basins reach only up to the knees of one of the 14-year-olds; they have to bend almost double to use facilities meant for primary school pupils.
Outside, a staff member struggles to push another student, in his wheelchair, up a slope so steep it leaves her out of breath.
And at Haygrove secondary school, also in the town, the headteacher, Karen Canham, sums up the strength of the feeling about a gloomy toilet block with 14 cubicles to serve all the school's 600 or so female pupils. "Some of them try not to drink to much during the day so they don't have to use them," she said.
All three schools, in the Bridgwater constituency of the Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, were counting on impressive rebuilds under the Building Schools for the Future programme.
On Monday the education secretary, Michael Gove, told the Commons that hundreds of schools would see their projects cancelled; East Bridgwater, Penrose and Haygrove were among them.
The schools had been tantalisingly close to the payouts: the contract that would have brought them to the financial closure stage was due to have been signed on Wednesday. Work at three other schools in Bridgwater, Somerset, set to be rebuilt under the town's £100m BSF projects, is currently "under discussion". Somerset county council has already spent £4.4m on the schemes.
East Bridgwater's headteacher, Peter Elliott, said of his school's crisis: "Our buildings are just falling apart. There are parts of the front facade that are so rotten you can poke your finger through. We've stopped replacing ceiling tiles because they need doing again every time it rains heavily. At £50 a tile it's not worth it. When it's been raining it gets smelly and goes mouldy, which is not good for the students.
"Our kids just deserve better. This is an area of high social deprivation, in the top 10% across the country. It's about giving them a sense of self worth."
Built in 1962, the condition of the fabric of East Bridgwater community school is said to be the second worst in Somerset. A tour of the site makes it obvious why: paint flakes from the lichen-encrusted wood cladding outside, and brown rings of damp adorn the ceilings.
The container-cum-changing room is lined with broken pegs and one of the strip lights has been smashed.
"It's hideous," said Elliott. The classrooms were swelteringly hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. The pupils were to have got a new school, complete with "amazing" IT facilities.
"It wasn't just about a new building, it was about a new way of understanding how to teach children for the 21st century. This Tuesday was like taking a kid to the toy shop and saying help yourself, and then saying, 'I've changed my mind, I haven't brought my credit card'.
"The students are hugely disappointed. I was devastated. It had the potential to have such a huge impact in terms of young people's aspirations, their sense of involvement and achievements. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for [them]."
As it was for all the affected children in Bridgwater.