More students to return to Warwick's Aylesford School on 'part-time basis'

By James Smith

2nd Oct 2023 | Local News

Temporary classrooms at Aylesford School are still 'weeks away' (image by James Smith)
Temporary classrooms at Aylesford School are still 'weeks away' (image by James Smith)

The headteacher of Warwick's Aylesford School has asked for patience from parents wondering when their children will be able to fully return to school.

After potentially dangerous concrete and asbestos were found at the Tapping Way school, much of the secondary school has been forced to remain closed for the start of the new term.

While some pupils were able to head into the classroom at the start of September, many have been forced to learn from home.

And as the school works to sort 18 temporary classrooms to allow all children to head back on site, headteacher Tim Hodgson said he understood that "everyone wants their children back into school as quickly as possible" but explained the complexity of the problem.

"Our school is now coordinating multiple agencies in order to remedy the problems that we have inherited and this is taking a huge amount of time and effort," he said.

"It is now a major and very expensive project involving the expertise of specialist professionals who will ultimately determine what needs to be done.

"It should be understood that our strategic planning cannot be conducted independently of these external agencies as we are heavily reliant upon their actions and timescales.

"Whatever we plan to do has to be accomplished with our partners as they methodically organize their individual responses."

With space on site limited, the school has decided to prioritise Year 7 pupils and then year groups close to final exams.

But with the temporary classrooms still "weeks away from being installed" Year 10s will come back part-time and Year 8's and 9's on rotation.

"I realise there will be some who disagree with our thinking just as there are many others who understand why we took this approach," Mr Hodgson added.

He added: "At the moment, I do not have an estimated date of arrival and our strategy over the next few weeks will be to bring the remaining year groups into school as far as we can before the delivery of the classrooms.

"As a result, we are bringing Year 10 back on a part-time basis from next week onwards.

"It will be a tight squeeze but once we have evaluated how this works in practice we will bring back Years 8 and 9 on a rotation.

"At the moment, we are modelling how best to do this whilst allowing our students to get a reasonably balanced curriculum that can be supported by remote learning. For those who believe this is a simple process, I can tell you that with the space available it is quite a headache to get right."

     

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