PUPILS and staff in Pilning are just weeks away from moving into their new £5 million school.

After three years of waiting St Peter’s Primary School will at last get a brand new building, which will open to class on March 1.

St Peter’s Primary School opened in September 2007, following the amalgamation of Northwick and Redwick School with Pilning Primary School.

After a year of working across two sites the school was finally condensed to its current Bank Road site in September 2008.

However, tomorrow Friday, February 8 will be the last day of class at the old site, and on Monday, February 14 staff and volunteers begin the move to the new £5 million building several hundred yards down the road.

Alison Dark, chairman of the school governors, said: "This has been a long time coming, and everyone is so very excited about what has been achieved.

All the children have been into see their new school and next week we are doing tours for parents."

The new school, which was funded by South Gloucestershire Council and has taken 17 months to complete, includes seven indoor classrooms, an outdoor classroom, an amphitheatre, a nature trail, a pond, a large hall, an open space library, community rooms, netball courts, vegetable plots for the children to grow their own, as well as the latest eco-friendly fittings and high tech gadgetry.

St Peter’s has been fitted with a biomass boiler, a sedam roof, under floor heating, which is controlled by a computer that monitors the classroom temperatures and CO2 levels.

Each of the seven classes has been assigned a colour from the rainbow and classroom furniture has been chosen to match.

Keith Tinline-Purvis, head teacher, said: "The children are as high as kites and the staff aren’t far behind them.

"They’ve done a brilliant job with the work. It is a teacher’s dream to work in a school you’ve had a hand in designing. Everybody had a say in the design, governors, staff, the community and the pupils."

There will be an official opening of the new St Peter’s Primary School building on June 29 when the school has invited back former pupils who did not get to enjoy the new building but were involved in the early stages.