Open evening to shed light on new primary school for Cheswick Village

An open evening being held next week will shed further light on plans for a new primary school that is due to open in Cheswick Village next September.

Cabot Learning Federation (CLF), appointed earlier this year to oversee the planning, development and operation of the new primary academy, is inviting parents and carers to attend the event on Tuesday (2nd October) at the Holiday Inn, Filton Road, between 6pm and 8pm.

Wallscourt Farm Primary Academy (as the school is tentatively known) will accommodate 60 pupils per year group, giving it a projected 420-pupil roll size by 2019.

The academy will become part of the CLF family of schools and join the existing CLF primary and secondary academies already open in Bristol, Bath and Weston-super-Mare.

Applications for the 60 Reception class places that are expected to be available in September 2013 are currently being accepted by South Gloucestershire Council. In common with all other state schools in the local authority area, the deadline for applying is 15th January 2013.

Should the academy be oversubscribed, places will be allocated to those applicants living closest to the school, measured in a straight line.

Building work on the new school, which will be situated in the centrally within Cheswick Village, between the Elan Homes development and the proposed Neighbourhood Centre, is yet to commence. A budget document recently published by SGC suggest that the work on site will be begin in “early 2013” in order to “meet the cashflow requirements and facilitate Reception facilities to be available in September 2013”.

The remainder of the building activity will not be completed until spring 2014, with the exact date being determined by the contractor’s programme and CLF requirements, according to the document.

The position of Principal Designate at the new school is currently being advertised by CLF. Applications for the £48,024 – £52,900 post must be made by noon on Monday (1st October). The successful applicant is expected to take up the role in January 2013.

On its website, CLF introduces the new primary school as follows:

“Our aim is to create an outstanding primary academy that the community served by the school can be proud of. The school will be a blend of the best traditional practices in primary education combined with innovative learning solutions that are proven to work not just in the UK but across the world. The location of the new school within the heart of a University community, supported by the Cabot Learning Federation Teaching School creates a unique opportunity to create a school that offers an education that will benefit the children who attend the school, but can also be a means of communicating a new model of learning across the continuum of primary-secondary-higher education for the wider system.”

Cheswick Village is a development of around 1,200 new homes on land formerly owned by Hewlett Packard – between the MoD Abbey Wood site and the University of the West of England (UWE). Planning permission was recently granted for a new Neighbourhood Centre within the development, which will provide retail space, a gym, and a nursery.

The new Neighbourhood Centre will be located immediately to the west of the primary school site, as shown on the Cheswick Village masterplan.

Photo: Part of the Elan Homes development at Cheswick Village, Bristol – located immediately east of the primary school site.