Our kids are happy in our church school here in the parish. The teachers are kind and dedicated and are working hard to make it better and better. The school is in a disadvantaged area and it can be hard to ensure that all the children learn to their full potential. But the staff are tackling difficulties one by one and making a real difference. One of the obstacles that our current school faces is a building built for a smaller school (2/3 of its current size) and built at a time when open plan classrooms were all the rage.
Our building isn’t bad – it’s clean and well maintained. We’ve recently had a refurbishment of the Foundation Stage area which is fantastic. We have a wonderful school allotment and many other great outdoor facilities. I am thankful for many blessings there.
But the thing is, our old school just got a new building. And today I saw this wonderful video of it. If you manage not to blink, you can see a clay tile made by the Queen just before we left (at around 7 minutes in). This is the building that I am praying for our current church school. We are thinking long term here…
The Vicar's Wife 
It looks amazing! I love all the wood and the beautiful coloured windows. And it seems to be a very practical building as well as a beautiful one.
That looks great.
Our kids school building is about to be expanded to accommodate the growth to a two-form entry that happened 18 months ago.
Is that a completely new building? surely it wasn’t built during the summer holidays was it?
Doubt we’ll get something as good as that!
It was a completely new building, peterB. It went up pretty quickly on a site next to the existing infants, but it took a good bit longer than a six week holiday! They then moved from the (separate) infant and junior schools, knocked down the old infants and incorporated that into the new grounds. It won all sorts of awards – Architype were a great firm of architects. See here http://www.architecture.com/NewsAndPress/News/RIBANews/News/2010/StLukesCofEPrimarySchoolwinsthe2010RIBASorrellFoundationSchoolsAward.aspx
Wow! I remember the old St. Luke’s building from around 40 years ago when in my gap year I played piano for a couple of assemblies and a Christmas service in the church. What a contrast!