Scarbrough primary school celebrates opening of “landmark” £6m facility

A North Yorkshire primary school celebrated the official opening of their purpose-built, £6m building with the local community this week.

Overdale Primary School in Eastfield, Scarborough, opened to pupils in September, but due to Covid the school postponed its official opening celebrations until restrictions had fully ended. On Tuesday that celebration took place before an audience of children, parents, governors, local councillors and other guests.

The new building has an emphasis on “flexible use of space and outdoor learning”, being designed to provide maximum air and light into classrooms. It is fitted with ventilation monitoring systems in all classrooms and was designed to take account of staff wishes for spacious classrooms and a hall fit for whole-school events.

The building also includes more flexible break out areas for small group learning interventions. Outdoors are two football pitches, a rounders pitch and one-mile running track, along with an environmental area and quiet place with bug hotels, logs and other features.

The school has double the capacity of the old building on its former site and its new location provides a link between the older parts of Eastfield and the new housing developments in Middle Deepdale to the north.

North Yorkshire County Council opened this new “landmark” school at the beginning of the school year to provide places for up to 420 children plus a nursery and community facilities.

Headteacher Vicki Logan commented: “It is a truly fantastic building. I’m really grateful to the architects and builders, Walter Thompson, they allowed me to have such a big say in the design, it’s pretty much perfect in terms of what we wanted the building to do.

“There were many challenges along the way with Covid and other issues impacting building, but the result is amazing. From the smaller details, such as not having toilets for early years and Key Stage 1 on the corridor, but next to the classroom so you don’t have five-year-olds wandering corridors on their own, to features such as an amazing outdoor space.”

The project has been funded jointly through county council capital funds and contributions from the housing developers Kebbell Homes and Keepmoat Ltd. The principal contractors were Walter Thompson Ltd and the design consultants Align Property Partners.

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