A catholic school is looking to triple the size of its sixth form as its new building nears completion.
Maria Fidelis is being re-born as a single site school in Phoenix Road in August thanks to the “lucky coming together” of three factors over the past decade.
By 2016 the school, formerly a convent, had secured funding from the Department for Education to expand, needed to move from its secondary site in North Gower Street due to HS2-related construction work and had a future home a stone’s throw away along Drummond Crescent thanks to the Metropolitan Police selling its garages along Drummond Crescent.
The new building, which will allow the sixth form to expand from about 80 students to 300, is due to be ready in August.
Lower school students currently in North Gower Street and the upper school in Phoenix Road – in buildings set to be demolished –will all be settled in their new home by Easter.
Head of sixth form Georgina Speller told the Ham&High: “The old buildings were not fit for purpose any more.
“We have had the sixth form cramped in two classrooms, which has not been ideal.
“The school has massively expanded in the last three years or so, and we wanted to offer unrivalled facilities.
“We will have a much more cohesive school community being all on one site. There has been an extra stress in the day for students and teachers getting over to both sites.
“There will also be fantastic outdoor sports facilities, which for a central London school is quite rare.”
The sixth form is set to benefit from a new IT suite, common room, study centre and classrooms, while the school is looking to build on its impressive roster of business relationships.
Students at Maria Fidelis, which became a mixed school in 2013, have regular workshops with Google, YouTube and LinkedIn, as well as a long-running partnership with nearby UCL. There is even an after-school club taking place at Eurostar in King’s Cross, where tutors from the railway service help students brush up on their subjects.
Georgina added: “This particular site is very well situated for the sixth form in terms of businesses, and we will be taking advantage of that massively.”
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