Follow the progress here…
Mid-March saw the school hold a ground breaking event to formally celebrate the start of the rebuild foundation work at the school. The ceremony saw senior staff from KLB, KLB students, Trustees, representatives from Kingswood Parish Council, Kier and the Department for Education come together to cut the turf. This provided a great opportunity for all involved to meet informally to discuss what they were hoping to see coming from the project.
The groundbreaking ceremony marks the next phase of what will be a long relationship between Kier, DfE and the School. The partnership has enormous potential and we are very excited about the journey ahead and look forward to the handover of our new buildings and eventually refreshed car parking and landscaping.
This will be the biggest single investment in the school and will provide modernised teaching facilities for many years to come.
This week will see the final parts of the Gym being demolished to make way for the new teaching block. Following this there will be a few power and drainage diversions before the foundations begin for the new building.
Following a small delay in the start of our partial rebuild project, we are pleased to announce that we are now working with Kier Construction and DfE with the aim of setting up site from October half term followed by some early preparatory works in advance of the building side starting in early 2023.As previously mentioned, we will retain our existing teaching accommodation until the new facilities are available however you will see some temporary changing rooms and storage containers onsite from the start of term 2.
The areas of the school impacted by this project remained unchanged. As a reminder these are:
• Kingswood (languages department)
• Gym
• DT
• Drama Hall, Stage area and Drama classroom behind
• Learning support
• Staff room area
Since our last update, we have reconsidered the H&S aspects of the way our bus and carparks will operate so this component has been slightly redesigned with the current layout as shown in the drawing below.
Extensive consideration continues to be given to the location of our new facilities and in particular to the phasing of the works to avoid / minimise any impact on our delivery of the curriculum and support to students as well as to the local community. Be assured that we are keeping the various stakeholders informed of any impact that the works may have.
In addition, below is a link to a virtual tour of the new part of the school which brings all the information to life:
Throughout all the design work we have been keen to have a focus on providing the best environment possible for the education of our pupils. Be assured we will be retaining our open campus style that is enjoyed by our students and will provide a large central quad with additional seating and canopies for use by all. These are in addition to the wider benefits of the modern teaching facilities that will be provided.