Head demands permanent solution at crowded school

Since Victoria Dock estate was developed in 1988 on the site of an abandoned Hull dock, the population serving its primary school has grown.

The school – rated as a “good school with some outstanding features” – has been oversubscribed since 2005/2006, with more than double the number of children applying than there were places this year.

It has been extended twice, with a modular classroom having to be brought in at the beginning of the autumn term to accommodate nursery children, after 27 appeals for new places were upheld.

Headteacher Denham Kite said the school was bursting at its seams with 50 extra pupils on the roll: “We just don’t have anywhere to put them physically. In the three days we have been back at school we should be getting out of the hall and being ready for PE at 1pm, but it’s a quarter to twenty past and we still have children in there eating.

“We can’t physically have everyone in the hall together and we are working hard to make sure we are not a split school.

“We need an extension – before I’d have been very diplomatic.

“The modular building doesn’t solve the additional people in the playground and in the hall.”

Earlier this year parents gathered signatures on a petition asking Hull Council to consider building a permanent extension. A council spokesman said they were “working closely with all partners to find a permanent solution that will be of benefit to both the school and families in the area”.