‘Perfect’ start New school ready to welcome first pupils on to £35m space
THE excited headteacher at Cheltenham’s new High School Leckhampton says it is “perfect”. Today is the first official day for the secondary school, albeit that only staff will be there and pupils will not attend until Monday of next week.
Helen Wood is the headteacher at the site for 11 to 16-year-olds, which has been built for £35 million on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council on two fields at the corner of Farm Lane and Kidnappers Lane.
Various delays meant there was a 12-month delay. That meant the school’s pupils and staff spent the first year of its life at Balcarras School in Charlton Kings.
Now, after a two-year construction period, the school has its own new facilities and will be home to 243 Year 7 and 8 pupils for the 2022 to 2023 academic year. The plan is for a new Year 7 intake to join every September until the school reaches its 900pupil capacity.
It was built to deal with a shortfall in the number of secondary school places in Cheltenham. Mrs Wood, who has 14 teachers at her disposal, can’t wait to get started.
She said: “I’m really excited. We’ve been working so hard for this. It’s a privilege to be here and the building is just perfect.
“We’ve got some brilliant students, amazing staff and I can’t wait. The new school is genuinely incredible.”
Mrs Wood said she was impressed with the large classrooms, of which there are 44, wide corridors, how it had been designed to sympathetically merge in with the environment and contained green features. They include solar panels and uniform items being made out of recycled plastic.
Facilities at the site include six laboratories, nine ICT suites, a sports hall, main hall, activities studio, six design and technology rooms, a large courtyard, picnic benches and a library. There is also a floodlit artificial sports pitch and a sports field that is being seeded so that it will be available for football, rugby and athletics.
Critics of the plan to build the school at the site feared it would spoil a beautiful part of Leckhampton and affect the view from Leckhampton Hill. They also wondered whether it would add to traffic problems on the busy A46 Shurdington Road, which is just a few hundred yards away.
But Councillor Philip Robinson, the council’s cabinet member for education, skills and bus transport, said he did not have concerns about either issue. He said the school-related roadworks in Kidnappers Lane would continue until October or November and a temporary footway would be in place until then.
He insisted that children walking and cycling to school would be safe. In terms of the school’s impact on traffic in the area, he said: “I don’t envisage major traffic problems as a result.”
MP Alex Chalk said: “I’ve been campaigning for this for seven years. For us to have £35million of new money coming into Cheltenham is a once in a generation opportunity.”