Construction of the new Post-16 (Sixth Form) Centre at Bradley Stoke Community School is nearing completion and the facility is due to open its doors to students for the first time at 8:30am on Thursday 2nd September.
Governors of the school were recently given a tour of the new building and Cllr Jon Williams has kindly provided some exclusive photos of the inside of the centre, which can be viewed in our Picasa Gallery [album; slideshow].
The text of a recent press release put out by the school is reproduced below …
After five years many of the original cohort of 180 students, now in Year 11, are looking forward to continuing their education at Bradley Stoke Community School in a new Post-16 Centre which has been built over the past ten months. The new Post-16 Centre will help to meet the needs of the local community and is due to be handed over to the school on 23rd August 2010.
Bradley Stoke Community School is part of the Concorde Partnership and will be offering an integrated post-16 timetable with Abbeywood Community School (formerly Filton High School), Patchway Community College and Filton College. Between them they will deliver a wider range of courses during 2010/11; more than any one institution could offer alone – this will broaden opportunities for young people in the local area.
Our Post-16 Centre is designed to cater for 180 students in years 12 and 13 eventually although there will only be year 12 in 2010-11.
The Post-16 Centre has been designed to be multi-functional with a number of the rooms being able to be split into smaller units by using sliding sound proof partitions. There are specialist rooms for media and music and an area where students can “chill out”.
Some aspects of the building have been removed or reduced because of the £1m savings that had to be made in the project to secure the funding from the now defunct LSC (Learning and Skills Council); however the impact on delivering educational excellence will hopefully go unnoticed by students.
Local Liberal Democrat councillor Jon Williams is one of the original school governors and is very excited by the prospect of the new facility. He said:
“I’m proud to be associated with the school and all that it’s achieved over the past 5 years. Ofsted recently judged us as an “outstanding” school so we have a lot to live up to. This new facility is an essential part of the plan for education in the town and I’m sure will be enjoyed by all those who attend. This new facility will be an asset not just for the school, but also the wider community.”
Funding for the new centre was approved by the LSC in March 2009. Contractors Thomas Vale Construction began construction in July 2009 and the symbolic turf cutting ceremony took place on 27th August 2009.
