School expansion gets green light from county

1:10pm Friday 10th October 2008

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A BASINGSTOKE school has been given the go-ahead to expand.

From September 2009, St Bede’s Catholic Primary School in Popley will be able to take one-and-a-half entry forms – up from the one-form, 30-pupil entry currently permitted.

Parental appeals had forced the Popley Way school to accept about 50 pupils annually over the past two years, and Hampshire County Council’s education chief, Councillor David Kirk, decided to allow some expansion to formalise the situation.

But he rejected the school’s request to expand to two-form entry on the grounds that would risk harming other schools in the area.

Headteacher Tony Murray said: “We’re obviously excited.

“We were having excessive numbers of applications. We weren’t able to admit all the families who wanted to send children here and were facing the prospect of splitting families who have siblings coming here.”

So far, the school has accommodated extra pupils within its existing buildings, but it will now add temporary buildings until a permanent extension can be arranged.

St Bede’s wants to build a two-classroom extension by 2010 and add another two rooms a couple of years later, as the pupils advance through the school.

Cllr Kirk said it would have been “perverse” not to increase the intake from 30 to 45 when the school was already taking that number from Catholic families.

“It seemed sensible to recognise the position when the Catholic diocese was willing to spend the money initially on temporary buildings and long term on a permanent extension,” he said.

“It won’t affect any other schools in other areas because the children wouldn’t have gone there anyway.”