THE sky’s the limit for one school hoping to win a share of a £6,000 makeover.

Piddle Valley First School near Dorchester entered the School Build Challenge to regenerate their school grounds into an open air learning environment.

The school is one of 21 finalists in the Dorset Echo and construction company Leadbitter’s competition that will reward three lucky winners with a makeover to the value of £3,000, £2,000 and £1,000.

The Dorset Echo and Leadbitter competition aims to give schools the opportunity to transform their outside areas.

Other ideas have included a model village, bird hides, nature walks, bike sheds and musical instruments.

Piddle Valley First School’s vision for their outdoor area is to create an outdoor classroom in an amphitheatre so that children can sit outside for lessons and hold assemblies and plays outdoors. Plans also involve developing the school’s vegetable garden and putting in new beds.

The final part of the makeover would see new plants and shrubs put into the school’s wildlife garden to encourage a variety of insects to the area.

Children would be able to sit in the area and watch the creepy crawlies while learning about nature.

Headteacher of the school Melanie Cridland said that winning a makeover for the school would be fantastic.

She said: “The funds available from the School Build Challenge would go a long way to helping us achieve our dream.

“As a rural school, fundraising is a challenge. Our Parent Teacher Association has so many demands for school equipment that our dream would take us years to complete.

“Our children would thoroughly enjoy being able to have their lessons in a designated outdoor arena and to have the wildlife surrounding them while they learn would be like paradise.”

The competition is now in the final stages and schools, teachers, friends and family need to get behind their favourite school to help them to win.

Every day in the Echo we are printing vouchers for the School Build Challenge and people need to collect as many as possible.

Schools then need to send in their collected vouchers after the final ones appear in the paper on Saturday, July 9.

Every school has an equal chance of winning because the number of vouchers collected will be divided by the number of students at the school.

This gives a voucher count per head to decide the winner.