Students told to move as arts places vanish

TALENTED YOUNGSTERS hoping to join a top performing arts college this September have been told to look elsewhere after it closed to new students.

Prospective students who auditioned to go to Cathedral Academy for Performing Arts (CAPA) in Wakefield have received letters saying there will be no intake this year.

Around 50 teenagers would have started studying at the Thornes Road college next term. But they cannot join CAPA because of complications in finding a new premises as part of an expansion of the sixth form.

The college said in a statement: “It is with great sadness therefore that CAPA sixth form and Cathedral Academy will be unable to provide its outstanding provision to a new cohort of students in September 2017.”

CAPA youngsters have launched an online campaign to save the course under the hashtag #savecapa.

CAPA had joined forces with Enhance Academy Trust to set up a new ‘free school’ in Leeds and a college for up to 500 youngsters.

The existing CAPA site would have taken its normal load of 50 students this September, acting as a temporary site for the free school while building work was carried out on the Leeds academy, which would have opened in 2018.

But the proposed city centre site, Number one The Embankment, was deemed not to be suitable because of its proximity to the proposed HS2 rail link.

If the HS2 rail project goes ahead, a new railway station would be built close that that building.

Kevin Jones, chief executive of Enhance, said the new academy could still be up and running in 2018 if an alternative building was secured.

He said: “I would stress that we are still working very closely with the Department for Education to find an alternative site.”