A PIONEERING bid from nine of the county's rural secondary schools - to bond them into one virtual technology college -goes before education bosses this week.

As the funding deadline approached last Friday, Carrs Milling donated £3,000 and the Cumbria Community Foundation of Cockermouth came up with £20,000.

Added to an earlier £92,000 donation from HSBC's Education Trust and some smaller contributions, the latest gifts allowed the Rural Academy to hit the £150,000 fund-raising target needed to submit its bid to become a joint specialist school.

"We are absolutely amazed and grateful to the people that have come forward," said Maurice Peddelty, the chair of the Rural Academy and head teacher of member school Samuel King's School at Alston.

Other Academy schools include Appleby Grammar, Settlebeck High at Sedbergh, Coniston's John Ruskin, Cartmel Priory, Beacon Hill at Aspatria, Ehenside, Lochinvar School of Longtown and Solway Community School.

Mr Peddelty said putting together the bid had exhausted the head teachers.

"It's been an enormous challenge in terms of logistics it's certainly made us use the e-communications which are the basis of this bid.

"We have had to get nine schools interacting almost as

one it's really collaboration to the nth-degree."

Frantic e-mailings and website message boards were all part of the process, since the far flung heads could not simply pop into each others offices at the end of the school day.

It was a taste of things to come, as these are the means, with the addition of video-conferencing, that pupils and staff will be using to share resources and classes.

For the schools, its now a matter of fingers crossed until June when they will hear if their bid is successful, and if they will unlock the accompanying £1.8million of Government funding over the next four years.

"We are confident that we have put in as good as bid as we could," said Mr Peddelty.