A CHESTER-le-Street school's technology department has been given a £25,000 boost.

Park View Community School's design and technology department won the grant from the BT Futuretalk Awards, enabling them to build a new computer suite.

The new facility will allow the school's two sites, which are separated by more than a mile, to communicate via the internet and video-conferences.

Students will be able to send their designs and ideas between sites where they will be put together by pupils using computer-aided design and manufacture systems. BT judges were impressed with plans at Park View to make a realistic design environment for the students to work in.

Chris Wilding, the school's head of technology, said: "In industry today many companies discuss ideas and send plans and designs using the internet or video-conferencing.

"Companies may be separated by hundreds of miles, or even continents, but by using these facilities business can be done quickly, and we want to give our pupils experience of design in the workplace."