VIDEO: Selsey Academy starts to rebuild after catastrophic fire
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The construction of a ‘temporary teaching village’ began this week, just metres from where the skeleton of the old school still stands.
The impressive new facility – complete with classrooms, library, IT and science suites – will be ready to welcome all 400 pupils back to school on the first day after half-term.
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Hide AdStanding on the site as cranes mounted on lorries lifted the first units into place on Tuesday morning, head teacher Tom Garfield said: “Seeing the first buildings of the temporary village take shape, a month or 21 working days after the fire is really significant.
“What it shows us and the young people in the community is there is real progress being made to having purpose-built classrooms on site and ready to support their learning.
“This will be ready to open 44 working days after the fire.
“For us that’s incredible, to get the pupils back into a normal school is the most important thing.
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Hide Ad“They will have everything we need for classrooms, there will be specialist facilities for science, food technology, we’ll have a school hall, catering, a proper library.
“All of the things you’d expect to find in a school will be in the village.”
Some of the pupils are already back at the school, being taught in temporary huts, while the others are at locations around the town including Selsey Town Hall and Bunn Leisure, and continuing to be taught as normal, Mr Garfield said.
He said all of the pupils’ computer work had been saved because it was uploaded to a cloud service, though physical art work has been destroyed.
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Hide AdMr Garfield reiterated that a new permanent school will be built in the future, and said clearing the burnt-out shell of the former buildings would take place in October.
He thanked the whole Selsey community for their ‘amazing support’.
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