Heads mark start of work on new £12m primary school

The new school due to open next September on Burnham Road will be accessed through a community cafe and all the ground-floor classrooms and some of those upstairs will open out onto outside “learning decks.”

Classrooms are being built with walls which can be moved to make the teaching space smaller or larger.

Its intake will include 420 pupils from Tilbury and Bethune Park Primary Schools alongside 40 children from Ganton Special School, and 40 others from the Education Service for the Hearing and Visually Impaired.

Sue Wright, who will head of the mainstream school, said: “The vision is about how we all blend and work together. It’s about looking at the children’s individual needs and seeing how their needs can be best met.

“The outside spaces will give children opportunities of experiments or for them to choose to take their notebook outside to finish off a piece of work.

“The community cafe is about welcoming parents and visitors into the school, giving them somewhere to congregate – it might be that children want to show their homework over a cup of tea.”