developments

St Joseph’s School is delighted to tell you about our exciting and ambitious proposals currently being planned for the school; plans to not only improve the quality of what we currently offer, but to extend that quality to a greater number of pupils than ever before.

From September 2010 boys will be accepted into Year 7 for the first time and, in the future it is our intention that a brand new Sixth Form will start accepting students, too. These changes are part of a major re-development plan currently being looked at by the school as well as new buildings and an extension, a new sports field and sports pavilion, new tennis courts, school kitchens and restaurant, and a car park to cater for roughly 60 cars are being planned. (Subject to relevant planning permissions).

St Joseph's is thrilled by what these intended plans mean, not just for the school itself but, more broadly, for the community as a whole. The familiar and recurrent problems of parking and congestion in the St Stephens Hill area will be eased, and the school also intends to share our brand new sports facilities both with local people and neighbouring schools.

Over and above the facilities in place to include boys there will be scope to add numbers to the roll generally. The quality of experience for all pupils will increase too, thanks to an all round improvement in facilities, to a better environment for sports and recreation, and to dedicated drama spaces. (And the Sixth Form will offer an unprecedented continuity in education, too, from the age of 3 all the way to 18 ...) As you can imagine, this has been -and will continue to be - a time of great excitement and change.

April 2010 Development Update

It is some time ago that I wrote to you about the progress of the proposed developments of St Joseph’s School and the time is now opportune to bring you up to date with the latest situation as well as other relevant matters. A year ago the Governors announced that various plans were being considered for additional developments to St Josephs which we had hoped to commence late last year. We decided, however, that before submitting a detailed planning application we would hold extensive discussions with the planners and other interested bodies, such as the Environmental Agency, to ensure that they would be happy with our proposals when they were finalised. This process has taken much longer than anticipated but we have now submitted the planning application and expect a positive result within the next three months. We will display a set of drawings showing our proposals in the entrance hall early next term. At the same time we have been in discussion with various Banks and grant bodies concerning the funding of the proposed developments. As you will all be aware the situation with the Banks has been particularly difficult over the past year but at last we seem to be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and hope to be able to report favourably on this front very soon which will allow the developments to commence. The programme for the development is phased so that priority items are constructed first without causing disruption to the daily activities of the school. There are, however, three urgent priorities:

There are, of course, a number of other proposed improvements to the school which will be phased in once the above have been completed and these will be shown on the plans.

John Marshall

Chairman of Governors