THE WESTER Hailes estate in Edinburgh was once a place to avoid - unless you were unfortunate enough to live there.

The first of its 24 tower blocks went up in 1969, mostly on farmland. Since then it has grown into the sort of estate synonymous with urban decay: too many homes served by too few facilities.

Wester Hailes Education Centre, with pupils aged 11 to 18, had more than its share of challenging children and poor results. Deputy principal Roy Beavis said its name had become associated with failure because of the reputation of the estate. Many parents sent their children elsewhere.

But over the past 10 years, it has been the subject of a major regeneration project, jointly backed by the local authority and business - the sort of co-operation now encouraged south of the border in the form of education action zones.

Investment has brought about a transformation. Eighteen of the high-rises have been razed and replaced with smaller buildings. Residents now feel safer and have found their once-isolated community attracting outsiders, drawn by the new bingo hall, cinema and improved shopping area.

The schools have played a key role. Parents have been taken on as classroom assistants. Older pupils have been helping younger children to read. The after-school activities programme, now attended by 40 per cent of pupils, has been expanded to include homework study clubs at weekends.

A separate project, the Breakfast Club, encourages primary children to attend school, giving them a place to eat together each morning.

Mr Beavis claims a positive atmosphere in his school has made it easy to retain teachers and pupil numbers at Wester Hailes have increased from 310 five years ago to more than 500 today.

There have been some encouraging exam results but, says the school, it is too early to tell whether academic performance will improve in the long-term.

The fact is that the social problems which face Wester Hailes’s 12,000 inhabitants have proved too deep to be solved by initiatives within the estate itself.

“Superficially, the partnership has done a wonderful job,” says Roy Beavis. “But we still have relatively high unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. The Government stresses ‘education, education, education’ but it is difficult to raise expectations against a background of poverty.

“Fifty per cent of families are on less than pound;6,000 a year, which is not much more than a student is on.

“Forty per cent of pupils get help with clothing grants, 49 per cent get free school meals and 40 per cent are from single-parent families. We’ve noticed that when there is bad weather some pupils don’t come to school because they don’t have the clothing.

“The lesson to be learned for action zones is you can’t parachute in with costly resources and hope that will fix it. Nor can you just come in with bright ideas.

“It is all to do with ownership. You must involve people in the way housing is managed and supported together with other facilities, including education.”

WHAT THE CHILDREN SAY

THE Government has allocated pound;800 million over three years to help regenerate run-down estates under the New Deal for Communities. Two children speak to Newsround Extra: Estates We’re In on BBC1 this afternoon at 4.55.

Lynn Magee, 13, from the Wood End estate in Coventry, which is not part of a health or education action zone: “I don’t like it that much. The gardens are covered in rubbish and there are not many people living here.

“Because I like football, it really annoyed me when they took the football posts down. I knew it was these big kids because my brother saw them do it.

“This old lady, because she is a widow, it took her 17 years to sort all of her house and gardens out. And people came round and took all the flowers out.

“They took the big tree out in the middle and they smashed all the windows, and it gave her a heart attack.”

Lee Martin, 12, from Wester Hailes: “My mum’s lived here since she was my age. And she’s told me all these stories about Wester Hailes and how it used to be. There used to be loads of drug-dealers about the streets but now it’s a really nice place.

“They’ve knocked down high-rise flats. There’s low-rise houses now and they’ve changed old flats and refurbished them.

“Every one (in one area) had to be evacuated because they were infested with rats. They were dirty. My favourite thing is the ABC cinema.”