THE £45m. St Sampson’s High and Le Murier schools project is on time and on budget. The new secondaries will replace St Sampson’s and St Peter Port and the Oakvale special needs school.
Pupils from St Sampson’s, Oakvale and St Peter Port, representing the joint schools council, visited the state-of-the-art development, accompanied by its head teachers, Alan Brown and Hazel Tetlaw.
‘The building is coming on in leaps and bounds - each time I come up there has been significant progress,’ said Miss Tetlaw, who will be the head of St Sampson’s High.
She believed the pupils would probably think the same as the staff about the development - ‘awesome’.
‘It’s just incredible, the size and the space, the opportunities and facilities. I think it could well take their breath away - it’s a wonderful building,’ she said.
‘Having visited some new schools in the UK, I think we are very, very fortunate. I think it’s a marker in how the island is investing in its future. The young people are what will make the island successful and the kind of community we are used to. It gives them a very good foundation for that.
‘I feel very fortunate to be involved with such a project and there are very few schools in the UK that are co-located with a special needs and mainstream school and that has to make a significant contribution to their social awareness and ability to work together,’ she said.
‘Now that our staff have been coming here in the last two or three weeks and seeing it taking shape, there is a real excitement.’
St Sampson’s High will cater for up to 720 pupils from 11 to 16 years old. Le Murier will replace Oakvale, which will be converted into a centre for pupils with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties.
‘It’s coming on pretty well and it’s really exciting,’ said Le Murier head Mr Brown.
‘The extra facilities our children will have and those for the other school will be absolutely amazing.
‘The facilities will mean the educational experience for all pupils in both schools can be enhanced by the separate teaching expertise which will potentially benefit all students,’ he said.
The project, which is the Education Department’s largest-ever contract, will be ‘future-proofed’ to last at least 50 years.
It is envisaged that the earliest any pupils will move in will be Easter 2009.
Project director Peter Gregory said: ‘Progress is going extremely well. There are eight-and-a-half months to run and we fully expect to be on time and budget. All the finishing trades are now starting and it’s looking good.
‘We still have to resolve both entrances but it’s not a big problem at the moment.’
There are currently about 100 workers on site and the landscape specialists have already started planting trees.
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