New £5 million Holgate Primary School is now open

The school, which was officially opened by Chairman of the County Council Sybil Fielding on Wednesday, March 2, is one of the first in Nottinghamshire to be funded by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) through the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP, a programme supported by Nottinghamshire County Council.

The school will be able to offer 420 places for pupils aged five to 12-years-old, plus 40 nursery places in a two-story building built within the existing grounds.

Executive headteacher at Holgate, Nicola Davies, said: “The journey the school has taken over the past 18 months has been tremendous.

“As newly amalgamated, we became a full primary school, but had to manage the complexities of this still functioning in the existing separate school buildings.

“The prospect of having a brand new purpose-built school building is what gave us all hope for the future.

“We were involved fully in the planning and design of our ‘new build’ interior and the EFA and Kier listened well to our ‘wish list’ in terms of what we wanted for our children’s provision.”

Originally the school was two separate infant and junior schools in two different buildings on one site. The schools amalgamated into a primary school in September 2014.

The next stage will be to demolish the old school buildings returning the area to playing fields, which will mean that the new school has bigger green spaces than previously.

As well as light, airy classrooms, the new school has group rooms for special sessions, a fully fitted computer room, two halls, a kitchen and plenty of storage space.