8:40am Thursday 11th March 2010
By Alexandra Womack
PLANS for a brand new academy in Yate are being drawn up by education bosses.
Yate International Academy will be rebuilt within the next two years and could include a much-needed theatre for the town.
The 45-year-old buildings, which until last year housed Kind Edmund Community School, will be demolished and replaced with an ‘innovative and exciting’ development for all the community.
Academy principal Roger Gilbert said: "I am looking for something that is exciting, an innovative design which enhances our specialisms in science, health and sport and develops our international curriculum and a building which can be used as an educational tool.
"I want it to be green, sustainable and something which the students and the whole community can be proud of for the next 50 years. This project in this part of Yate has been long overdue."
The new building could take any number of shapes but, Mr Gilbert revealed, a theatre or auditorium is looking likely.
"We want students to have great facilities so our established performance groups can take their talents to a different level," he said.
"One of the discussions is for an auditorium on site. It could be a mini-cinema and used by various groups in the town.
"We have thought very carefully about the extended school provision and what it should offer the community as well as the students on a day-to-day basis."
The new academy will include a dance studio, a much larger sports hall and an all-weather pitch.
"The opening will come at a time when the country is at a real high with the Olympics in London," said Mr Gilbert.
"I am sure it will regenerate aspirations and provide a sense of real belief in this part of Yate."
The academy reopened as a federation with Winterbourne International Academy, previously The Ridings’ High School, in September last year under the Government’s Pathfinder programme. Both academies became independent of South Gloucestershire Council and the collaboration was the first of its kind in the country.
As part of the project, the Department for Children, Schools and Families said it would rebuild the oldest school within three years of opening as an academy.
Developers Balfour Beatty and Wilmot Dixon have already been shortlisted for the building contract and the two firms will now compete before a winner is announced in July.
A planning application is expected to be submitted to South Gloucestershire Council in September and building work will commence in January 2011. The new academy will open in September 2012.
Mr Gilbert said parents, students and staff are being consulted.
"A consultation is being held asking what they would like the new building to provide," he said. "I see that as a really essential part of the whole process."
A series of open mornings will be held in June when members of the public will be invited to view the plans.
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