By community correspondent Nathan Holt.

The long campaign for the building of a new secondary school in North Kingston will take another significant step forward this coming Tuesday, 9th February, at 7.00pm when a public meeting regarding the future of the proposed new school will be held. Meeting at Fern Hill Primary School, the open discussion will give residents the opportunity to find out more about such an ambitious proposal with Learning and Children’s Services Directorate. Also, the event will give residents of Kingston the perfect opportunity to personally suggest and debate key aspects of a new secondary school such as designation, size, location and specialisms.

The current proposal is to open a new 240 places per year Secondary School incorporating the current site of the North Kingston Centre, which will be ready to take its first students by September 2015. Estimated to cost an approximate £30 million, the new school will be located on the current site of the North Kingston Centre which currently hosts Adult Education and a number of other services.

But although support for such a challenging project is not overwhelming, with a slight majority of 51.6% support from initial consultation, the obvious need for new secondary school in the future is finally undeniable. Experts predict that the numbers of births in Kingston are only going to rise and rise. And the general belief is that this rate will rise so much so that the number of year 7 places required will jump from this year’s 1549 places to over 2000 places each year by 2020. Thus, as there are currently only 1615 places available in each year group in Kingston secondary schools, the extra 240 places per year the new school will provide will be vital for educating future generations.

Having been in the pipeline for seemingly years, the proposal has only really gathered momentum in the past six months, with the instigation of the statutory processes of opening a new school. The closing date for responses to this public consultation stage is 26th February, where the committee will consider the feedback, before moving onto the School Competition Process. This is now a regulatory process that allows a number of prospective providers of new schools to come forward and bid to run the school. This process is expected not to end until November, where the Schools Adjudicator will make the decision about who will provide the new school. Construction is scheduled to finally begin in September 2012, in preparation for the grand opening of a brand new school to Year 7 pupils in September 2015.