Radioactive rocks and old registers – the realities of moving an entire school
Two years in the planning, a Cardiff comprehensive school is preparing to move site. Education editor Abbie Wightwick reports on a mammoth undertaking...
Radioactive rocks, 1950s school registers, and a 3ft high metal safe are among items being packed up as a Cardiff school prepares to move.
Pupil admission books dating back 60 years were found in a cupboard left locked for decades at Eastern High.
They will be sent to Glamorgan Archives for safe keeping.
The move has taken two years to plan as the 750-pupil school in Newport Road prepares to go to £25m purpose-built premises on the old Cardiff and Vale College site in Trowbridge Road in January.
Head teacher Armando Di-Finizio said: “My mantra for the last two years has been ‘get rid of junk’.
“Teachers are hoarders. We have found books that have been here since the 1950s when it was Caer Castell School. The big thing is being ruthless with what you keep. We have found rooms we did not know existed and opened cupboards locked for years.”
Items labelled for the move include the science department’s two radioactive rocks.
The rocks, stored in wooden boxes, come with a Geiger counter.
The removal firm also had to be consulted on how to safely move hazardous chemicals from the science block.
Over the past two years an inventory of every room has been made across the sprawling site, which opened as Caer Castell School in the 1950s before becoming Rumney High in 1970 and then Eastern High in 2013 when Rumney and Llanrumney high schools merged.
“We found seven or eight lost cupboards that had not been opened for 30 years,” admitted business manager Sion Lewis, who is masterminding the move.
“We have gone though generations of school life and blitzed the school. It took 18 to 24 months to do an inventory and asset manage.”
Other items packed and ready to go are:
2,000 cardboard boxes of coursework and other papers; up to 400 boxes of heavy items; one safe, and; hundreds of books. A further 200 to 300 boxes of confidential papers have been shredded and 400 boxes of papers have gone for storage at Cardiff council and Glamorgan Archives.
Some sensitive paperwork, such as child protection and special educational needs documents, must be stored for decades by law in case it is required for legal and other issues.
All items in the school, from chairs to white boards, have been colour coded. Everything labelled blue goes to the new school, all labelled red is binned, and anything marked green is being offered to other schools to take.
Former pupils have been invited in this week to say goodbye to the school before it is knocked down, probably to make way for housing development.
This is the fourth school move Mr Di-Finizio has managed.
“I don’t know of anyone else with the same experience in Wales, and across Britain there can’t be many people who have moved a school four times,” he said. “A lot of it is to do with working with contractors and in terms of timelines and IT.
“With staff there is a little bit of lowering expectations because when you move the new building won’t have everything you want. There may not be as much storage space.”
In 2015 the school had the worst GCSE results in Wales, but over the past two years it has improved and has just been removed from special measures.
Mr Di-Finizio, who was brought in in December 2014 after the school had one of the worst Estyn reports ever handed out, hopes the new site will improve the school’s fortunes further.
“A new building is not a panacea and it won’t necessarily improve behaviour and results immediately. But in my experience of moving a school nothing has declined and people feel proud.”
The last day on the old site for all pupils is Tuesday, December 19, with three moving days on December 20, 21, and 22 when year 10 and 11 pupils only will be allowed in for exam revision.
Staff get access to the new building for the first time on December 21 and will unpack on January 8 and 9 before school opens to all pupils on January 10. Again, year 10 and 11 pupils will return for literature and IT exams on January 8 and 9 in the new building.
Over the Christmas holidays 10 non-teaching staff will work to make sure IT is up and running and there will be 24-hour site security for several months.
The new school will have state-ofthe-art technology with wifi speeds 10 times faster than in the old building.
A new timetable is being prepared for January and all 100 staff will have to hot desk, while some of the 50 teachers will eventually share some classrooms. Staff will not have the storage space they have had but all pupils and staff will have lockers.
“Pupils are so excited about that,” Mr Di-Finizio said.
He describes the school building he came to three years ago as “postapocalyptic”.
“Creating a nice environment makes pupils know we care,” says Mr Di-Finizio. “They thought we didn’t care.
“Just putting down new carpet in this old building improved behaviour. But a new school is not a panacea. For the last two years we have had to plan to move and improve. We want to keep improving after the move.”