£3.1m work to take pupil roll past 1,000
A HIGH school is to expand by more than a quarter so it can cater for hundreds of extra pupils and complete major improvements to its facilities.
Birches Head High was the first school to benefit from Stoke-on-Trent's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and has already had £9.5 million of work.
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EXPANSION PLAN: Birches Head High.
But now an outline planning application has been submitted to carry out the final piece of the refurbishment jigsaw, which is expected to cost £3.1 million.
It includes a single-storey extension, a major revamp of its science block, parking and access improvements, and better drainage for the school playing fields.
Birches Head High has room for 828 pupils, although there are 751 youngsters on roll. Once the work is finished, it will be able to admit 1,050 students.
Broadway Malyan, the council's agent, said the school was attracting more pupils as "community confidence grows".
But the expansion is also linked to plans to shut Mitchell Business and Enterprise College, in Bucknall, and replace it with an academy in Adderley Green or Park Hall.
Education officials are predicting some families living in Mitchell's catchment area will choose Birches Head.
Initially, Birches Head was due to expand so it could take 900 pupils. The council has not revealed why it has now increased the school's potential intake.
If planning permission is granted, construction could start in May 2011 and be completed by August 2012.
The first phase of improvements began five years ago.
Birches Head used to operate across two sites, almost a mile apart. Some of the buildings had decaying concrete walls, leaky roofs, and grim classrooms.
When students moved on to one site in 2006, they enjoyed a new hall, drama studio and cutting edge ICT centre.
The following year, work was completed on the second phase, which included a recording studio, student support facilities, art rooms, and specialist areas.
The previous work was funded through BSF and a private finance initiative. But the latest £3.1 million is all BSF cash.
A council spokesman said: "The planning application is designed to complete phase three of the programme.
"It includes designs to remodel the school's science block to accommodate more flexible learning spaces, landscape improvements to the school grounds, and extra classroom spaces."
2 Comments
by Tim Wright, Baddeley Green
Monday, April 05 2010, 10:30AM
“It is interesting to note that the proposals to increase capacity at Birches Head go beyond those in the original LA Strategy for Change, presumably increasing the BSF spend at Birches to the detriment of other schools. Especially odd when nearby Holde Lane is facing a decreasing roll.”
by Roland Machin, Stoke-on-Trent
Monday, March 08 2010, 1:23PM
“"The wrong side of the tracks".
The decision to spend even more money on the Birches Head site is to compound a mistake that has alreay been acknowleged.Birches Head School is on the "wrong side of the tracks" and set to become even more inaccessible as the plans of Moorland and City Railways come to fruition in the near future.The plan is to up grade the railway that borders the grounds of the school to sixty miles per hour running to enable freight trains of nine hundred tonnes to access the main line at Stoke.Similarly it is anticipated that passenger trains will cross Birches Head road on their way to Alton Towers.I wonder if the city fathers have taken this into account in their ill advised plan to direct hundreds of pupils out of their community to an already isolated school site.
Yours JRM.”