A VITAL £100m council rescue package, designed to transform Liverpool’s crumbing secondary schools, can today be unveiled by the Daily Post.

Defiant Liverpool council unleashed the masterplan in response to the axing last year of a £350m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme which dashed plans for 26 city schools to be rebuilt or completely modernised.

The council had recruited a task force of leading business figures to help officials, including education cabinet member Jane Corbett and city leader Joe Anderson produce a scaled-down “Plan B” – hoping in vain that the Government would match fund its own investment through sales of assets, empty school buildings, private finance and borrowing.

However, we can reveal Liverpool council will now press ahead and revive many of the planned makeovers in an ambitious £100m masterplan designed to “make sure our youngsters have the best start in life”.

The £100m secured will cover a first phase which is set to transform eight secondaries deemed in most need and complementing regeneration between 2013 and 2017.

And we can reveal the council plans include rebuilding and co-locating girls’ school St Julie’s Catholic High School with fellow Woolton secondary St Francis Xavier’s College, on the latter’s Beaconsfield campus, in a scheme including a shared sixth form and due to be finished by 2017.

Three other schools will be rebuilt using economical construction known as EdVenture.

The schools benefiting include the first two schools that had been set to be transformed under the next stage of the BSF scheme: Archbishop Beck, in Walton, and St John Bosco Arts College for Girls, Croxteth, as well as Everton Valley secondary Notre Dame.