Work completes on High Meadow Community School expansion
A local school in Coleshill is celebrating the completion of its newest addition, a £1.7m teaching block, enabling the school to serve a greater number of children from the local community.
Due to its size, the previously named High Meadow Infant School was only able to provide for pupils up to (and including) Year 2, offering 90 spaces for children in the local area.
Following a phased construction project with older pupils initially taught in temporary classrooms, the addition of the new four classroom teaching block, ‘The Burrow’, means the school can now accommodate 210 pupils up to Year 6, and has since been renamed High Meadow Community School.
As well as the new classrooms, pupils also have access to additional toilets and a library in the newly built curved expansion, which wraps around the main building, alongside refurbishments to areas of the existing school.
The expansion addresses the shortage in primary provision in the Coleshill area where children previously left the infant school without a guarantee of a place at Coleshill Primary for Year 3. The newly-expanded school will have capacity for all seven year groups from Reception to Year 6 in one setting.
This has been provided on a phased basis with additional year groups accommodated each year after they had completed Year 2. As of September, the school will be operating six of seven year groups with a full cohort of children attending, bringing its capacity up to 210 from September 2022.
Funding was allocated by Warwickshire County Council through its School Capital Programme Report.
Delivered by local contractor, Speller Metcalfe, the project was procured through the Pagabo Medium Works framework for Warwickshire County Council.
“As a local contractor it has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside High Meadow staff and pupils to provide them with a new facility that will continue to support and enhance the great teaching and learning opportunities already on offer,” said Matthew Bailey, Small Works manager at Speller Metcalfe.
“Throughout the project the team has strived to ensure we have worked hand in glove with the local community, and as a result achieved two ‘Excellent’ reports from the Considerate Constructors Scheme for our work here.”
Councillor Jeff Morgan, portfolio holder for Children, Families and Education at Warwickshire County Council, said: “This is a really excellent example of how to use resources most effectively to give the best possible outcome. Expanding the school to incorporate both infant and junior cohorts has met the needs for school places in the area, allows the children to stay in the same school from Reception through to the end of Year 6 minimising disruption and allows staff to share resources. It’s better for all involved and I am delighted that such progress has been made.”
To bring the construction project to life, the school documented the build from start to finish on their Twitter account.
