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£24m academy gets green light
A NEW £24 million school has been given the go-ahead by Westminster planning chiefs.
King Solomon Academy, sponsored by charitable trust, Absolute Return for Kids (Ark), will set up a temporary site in Penfold Street in September until the new state-of-the art school is completed in early 2010.
It will be the third academy to be opened by Westminster City Council, following Westminster and Paddington academies, which opened in September last year.
Four temporary classrooms and support facilities for King Solomon will be housed on the Penfold Street site, offering places for 60 four-year-olds in September.
Work on the new school building will begin in 2008 and secondary school places will be offered from 2009.
In the long-run, the school is expected to offer places to 840 pupils between the ages of 4 and 18 as well as part-time nursery education to 60 three-year-olds.
Westminster schools chief Councillor Sarah Richardson said: “The school will offer families in the north of Westminster greater choice for their children and will help address the increasing need for school places.”
The bulk of the funding for the school will come from the Department for Education and Skills with the council and Ark each putting around £1.5m towards the building costs and future running of the academy.
But Padraic Finn, secretary of the Westminster National Union of Teachers, which opposes academies, condemned the move.
He said: “It’s handing schooling to private institutions which are not accountable to local people in the way that state schools are.” |
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