A brand new school that you can put your own stamp on is a delight. To be able to influence the design of the building and the way the facilities can be used is a joy.
Ebbsfleet Green Primary is a new Garden City school and is part of the Maritime Academy Trust; an educational charity catering for over 2,600 pupils aged three-11 across eight primary schools with nurseries based in London and Kent.
Ebbsfleet Green Primary will serve the rapidly growing community in the new Ebbsfleet Garden City and help meet increasing demand for school places in Dartford and Gravesham, whose population is predicted to rise to 252,000 by 2031.
Beginning as a one-form entry school, we will become two-form to match Ebbsfleet’s rising population. This year the school will have Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes.
However, our main school buildings will not be ready until August next year and we were due to have temporary buildings for our new pupils to move into.
Our merger with the Maritime Academy Trust has proved very fortunate for us as we are so lucky, in these unprecedented times, to have secured Bligh Primary School, Strood, as our new temporary location for Ebbsfleet Green Primary from September.
Bligh has a lovely set of bright, airy classrooms with their own reception area available. The head of Bligh School has kindly agreed that we could use this. This allows us to have our planned nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes for our Ebbsfleet Green children.
This space would be solely used by us, allowing us to create Ebbsfleet Green Primary School within Bligh. A school within a school!
It also meant that we could get into the classrooms early and prepare them for the new school year. By bypassing all temporary accommodation completely we’re also going to have better spending power to put into the main school. So that’s another benefit.
We are all really excited about the new build though, especially as we can put our own stamp on it. It’s going to be a state of the art school that we hope will be at the heart of the community.
Passionate
One of the things that I really wanted was an open foyer which included the school’s library.
Initially the library was on the top floor but I’m very passionate about reading, about sharing, reading with parents and carers, about getting people in and really seeing the fact that we value reading so highly, so it’s going to be the first thing that anyone sees as they walk into the school.
It’s open plan and we’ll have soft seating, so it’s going to be a very welcoming environment that parents and carers will immediately see. Also it will give us the opportunity to showcase children’s learnings and outcomes and it gives us the possibility of being an exhibition space.
For example, if we have events at the weekend, people using our hall or other facilities, will be able to come in and see what we’re about right from the outset.
One of the other major influences that we secured was our resource provision. In the original plans, it was on the ground floor. And I’ve asked for it to be split into two.
Because we’re going to have Key Stage 2 children with ASD, as well as Key Stage One. Because we are so committed to inclusion we want children, if they can be, to be included within their mainstream classes. It was really important to me that there was a split provision, which again, is quite unusual.
Also we have ASD resource provision in our canteen, which is linked to the main school. We’ve actually got a little separate meal area for children that can’t necessarily cope with sitting in a noisy environment. And again, that was a suggestion made by my team and I and the architects listened and responded quickly to that.
One of the things that was also really important was the availability of natural light throughout the building and I’ve got to say that the architects look to have done a brilliant job.
The inclusion of such things as sun tubes, a glazed floor panel which you can look down onto the library, glazed doors and roof panels allows natural light throughout the building.
Because we are serving a new Garden City, our outdoor space is also very important to us.
Courtyard
The original designs didn’t have a courtyard and that’s something that we wanted to put in. Children will be able to eat their lunches outside, we’re planning on getting benches with umbrellas and making it a lovely place to spend lunchtime and breaktime.
The classroom doors within that courtyard will open out straight on to it and there’s scope for outdoor learning as well.
We are also going to have a wildlife area, a pond, a Multi Use Games Area and a playing field. And because we’re in a Garden City, we’re going to be committed to children walking, cycling or scooting into school.
Neolithic
One of the interesting things about the build, which will have educational benefits for the children, was finding the remains of a Neolithic man on the site – not a whole skeleton though.
We were going to exhibit them in the foyer but the archaeologists said they were too valuable for us to do that and they would have to be preserved in special conditions.
However, they’re making a replica for us which can put on display. It will bring the past, the present and the future together. The children can see what their community has stood on for thousands and thousands of years.
The first theme that we’re going to be studying is ‘We are Ebbsfleet Green’. We will think about our identity and that will be part of it.
And really thinking about our community, where we are, what its history is and what we want for now and then looking at the future, what a garden city is, what’s different about living here, why are they important?
It’s going to be very exciting when we finally get to move into our new school environment.
Joanne Wilkinson-Tabi is the executive headteacher of Ebbsfleet Green Primary.
