School will be out forever in Yarmouth come January when the town’s school will move to another town.
Pupils at Yarmouth Primary School are looking to make the move to Freshwater, on the site of the former All Saints Primary School.
The countdown is on until the new school building in Freshwater is ready, and it looks like pupils will be in their new school for the new year.
Building work on the £4.5 million fit-for-purpose school, on School Green Road, is nearly finished according to the council’s education lead, Councillor Debbie Andre. Speaking at cabinet last week, Councillor Andre said the work is 6-8 weeks ahead of schedule and it is planned to hand the building over on 9th December.
Over the Christmas holidays, the school will be moved so Yarmouth pupils will head to Freshwater for the start of the new January term.
She said:
“Our Island children deserve a fantastic environment to be taught in and that is what we are giving them with this new school.”
New hard and soft play areas have been included; a library, technology suites and a special educational needs resource base as well as part of the new building using ragstone from the old building.
The plans for the new school — which will accommodate 210 pupils —were viewed as controversial because it meant the closure of All Saints’ Primary School with some pupils moving to Yarmouth. The school closure was done to combat the number of surplus school places in the West Wight area.
According to the council, the former All Saints’ site, which had been a school for more than 150 years, was poorly arranged and suffered from subsidence, structural cracking, dry rot and water ingress. It was argued the school was not suitable for modern-day primary education.
Once the new building was complete, Yarmouth Primary would then move into the site. Permission was given for the building works two years ago with demolition work starting in the summer of last year.
The school and pupils moved out of All Saints and completed its final term in summer 2020.
The Little Stars Pre-School next door remained in place. In recent weeks, Yarmouth Town Council has announced its bid to save the former school building by applying to make it an asset of community value.
How so very kind of the Council to be oh so concerned with the children’s welfare. Strange how the last 150 years it has coped well enough, and with modern materials and skills it is ‘deemed’ not fit for purpose now.
More like they have other plans for the site, and or have grateful developers building the new one, or both.
Nice one Goldring, another piece of our Childrens local Yarmouth history gone forever.
The conservatives have wanted this land for years …Pugh tried and failed .. they have tried every way to land grab .. and the weak Yarmouth Council did nothing .. so …sorry to all the children who will be disrupted by the move and future students and parents that have no school choices in the future .. so watch the old Yarmouth School site as the developers and contractors move in …and build more second homes … so RIP Yarmouth Town.