Haddenham St Mary's CE School has had four 'state of the art' classrooms built and staff were ecstatic in being able to open their doors to their new classrooms at the start of this term.
The new space has now enabled the school to allow a full two-form entry, so helping to accommodate the rising number of children in the village.
£1.4 million has been spent building the classrooms and the resulting space is truly impressive. The school was also given a £75,000 budget to equip the classrooms. It is reassuring to see that money is still being invested in our children's education at a time when there are so many cuts in other areas of public expenditure.
The classrooms have been carefully designed by architect Ben Russell to be bright and stimulating for the children.
Each classroom has its own vibrant colour scheme with matching toilet and corridor area. Ben has researched and applied awareness of the impact of various colours on children's learning.
The classrooms are also designed to be indoor/outdoor classrooms with a full length bi-fold wall which opens out on to the vast school field. This will enhance the school's specialism in outdoor learning. The school is an accredited forest school and is one of only 100 schools in the country to achieve the gold 'Learning outside the classroom' mark.
The new extension also carries photo-voltaic (solar) panels on its south-facing roof.
The classrooms have been equipped with brand new 'teaching walls' which include 65 inch 'Clevertouch' interactive screens. These are the latest in teaching resources and are proving very successful with staff and pupils alike.
The original parts of school have also been redecorated to provide a welcome facelift and new 'Clevertouch' screens have been added there too, along with plenty of fantastic new equipment. The Reception children now have all the original school buildings for their dedicated use.
At one stage the build was nearly nine weeks behind schedule with serious implications for the start of the new school year! Thankfully, this was retrieved by the hard work and dedication of the site manager Scott Hellaby and his team who responded to the urgent need for children to access their new classrooms for the start of term.
The staff and children of Haddenham St Mary's School feel very blessed – living and learning in luxury!
Karen Collett (headteacher) would like to say thank you to the residents who live close to the school for their patience during the time of construction.
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