Twelve months ago, Aston Manor School in Birmingham was on the verge of a total transformation.

After countless hours spent in meetings, poring over costings, architect’s plans and reams of red tape, the secondary school was gearing up for a rebuild and refurbishment programme to take it into the 21st century.

Head teacher Heather Roberts and her team saw the Labour government’s ambitious Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme – a £47 billion investment to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in England – as the chance to give the students a school they deserved.

But their dreams of a rebuild were dashed in July last year, when the new coalition Government called a halt to the £47 billion programme.

“It was a huge, huge disappointment,” said Mrs Roberts, who has been head teacher at the school for the past seven years.

"We’d gone in for a complete rebuild but when the programme started to decline, we put in for 50/50 rebuild and refurbishment. The architect’s plans were drawn up and the students had their say in the design.

“When I heard the programme had been scrapped, my heart sank.”

But amidst the disappointment came a call that would get the school building plans back on track.

Aston Pride, a Government-funded New Deals for Communities regeneration programme, contacted the school, telling it about £200,000 of available funding to schemes which would “make a real difference to neighbourhoods”.

The only condition was that the funding had to be allocated by March 31 2011, so Aston Manor had to move quickly.

The school entered – and won – a bid for the cash, which would go towards a new sixth form centre on site.

Mrs Roberts added: “It was always our goal to have a sixth form at the school, and we had been running a pilot sixth form for the previous year.

“My previous school had a sixth form, and I knew what a difference having 17 and 18-year-olds at the school would make.”

Planning permission for the new two-storey building was granted in January, and along with £100,000 of the school’s money, work began on the new sixth form centre shortly after.

A steel and timber design by Birmingham-based firm Bespace, the Ray Linforth centre, named after the school’s chairman of governors, boasts three new study rooms, a common room and office.

The centre is will be in time for the school’s new 11-18 status from September, and it is hoped it will be used by up to 200 students when running at full capacity.

Mrs Roberts said she felt incredibly proud when the centre was officially opened by Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Coun Anita Ward.

But despite the remarkable achievement of building a new sixth form in just five months, Mrs Roberts said the event was “tinged with a bit of sadness”.

“The official opening was a fantastic day. We didn’t want to have too much of a fanfare, but we wanted to recognise how far we had come,” she said.

“Even so, you do look at the building and think about what it would have been like if BSF had gone ahead.

“But we have such fantastic staff and students here that you realise that if it isn’t the bricks and mortar that makes a school – its the people inside it.”