We are all quite aware that it’s back to school this week.

The traffic certainly is somewhat busier in the mornings as hundreds of pupils make their way to school as a new term begins after the long Summer break.

The school days of this generation of pupils are often depicted as being so far away from the 1980s chalk and blackboard experience of their parents. Today there are i-pads, interactive whiteboards, trips abroad, computers in classrooms -- such a different experience to what went before them.

But a relic from 1980’s schooldays remains for one school. Almost improbably, a mobile building that is coming up to 30 years old is being used for a class of P5 and P6 children, who are eight to ten years old, in St. Scire’s Primary School in Trillick.

It’s been described as ‘not fit for purpose’ in a recent government school inspection and being listed as category one, meaning high priority for replacement, but the Department of Education says it simply has no money to replace the module on the Trillick school site.

One local councillor reports that there is a smell of damp when you enter the mobile. Rot had created a hole in the wall that the teacher could put their hand through. The school authorities had to undertake minor works to patch up the problem.

In winter, pupils can see icicles forming at the back of the room. Very educational no doubt for Science lessons but hardly a comfortable environment for children of whom the majority are aged under 10 years old. Very few adults would work in such an environment.

The bathroom facilities are such that children must go outside to access facilities within the school building.

The mobile had a life expectancy of just ten years but almost 20 years after that time, it is still being used as a place to educate children.

To say that such a state of affairs is unacceptable is an understatement.

The children of this school face another winter in a freezing classroom with no immediate prospect of change or improvement. The time has come for action and for a replacement to be immediately funded.