The long fought-for new secondary school in north Kingston will be split between sites at the Hawker Centre and North Kingston Centre, Kingston Council announced this morning.
A total of 1,200 pupils aged between 11 and 16 will be crammed into new buildings at the North Kingston Centre, Richmond Road, with the school’s sixth form and sports facilities located half a mile away at the Hawker Centre in Lower Ham Road.
Other options rejected by the council were Latchmere Road recreation ground, Dinton Field in Park Road, the Kingfisher site in Fairfield Road and a site spread between the Kingston road allotments and recreation ground and the Lower Marsh Lane sewage works.
The council is currently in the process of bidding for more than £100m of Government funding to help finance the new school, but tellingly has said the project may have to be completed through regular ‘basic need’ capital funding from the Government instead.
Residents, parents and local businesses will have the opportunity to debate the proposal with the council’s director of children’s services at a public meeting in the Hawker Centre from 7pm on July 22.
More details are available at kingston.gov.uk/secondary_expansion, and consultation documents will be sent to residents of the Kingston Town neighbourhood and parents whose children currently attend a Kingston primary school from July 20.
Building work is not expected to start on the new school until early 2012 - just 18 months ahead of the time the great surge in primary school pupil numbers which has rocked Kingston in the past two years is due to hit the borough’s secondary schools.
A decision on where to site the new school is expected to be made at the council’s executive meeting on September 1.
Any comments on the proposals need to be submitted to the council by August 17, and will be presented at the executive meeting.
Campaigners have been fighting for more than 10 years to get a new secondary school built in the north of the borough, due to worries over a lack of choice for local pupils entering secondary school.
Aside from the fee-paying Kingston Grammar School the selective Tiffin schools are notoriously difficult for pupils to get in to, while for many children in the area the next nearest option is Grey Court in Richmond.
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