Pictures: York school opens its new £1.9 million facilities
A major £1.9 million upgrade to a York secondary school is now complete.
Millthorpe School now has refurbished and modernised dining areas, toilet blocks and classrooms.
Outdated parts of the school have been transformed under the project, overseen by the property group Eddisons.
Work began in summer and took four months to complete. It has helped to free up the circulation of students and staff through the building.
Areas that created bottlenecks and saw lengthy lunchtime queues have been reconfigured.
Declan Williams is a building surveyor with Eddisons’ 60-strong specialist education team, which works with schools to secure government funding for improvement projects as well as carrying them out.
He said: “We have been working with South Bank Academy Trust for four years after being approached to carry out the initial condition survey.
“Circulation was identified as being a major issue that was disrupting the school day and that was one of our main challenges, to reconfigure the way people travel around the entire school.
“We have had excellent feedback from the school who have told us that both staff and pupils are enjoying the more orderly atmosphere and increased capacity to serve more people at lunchtimes.
“Some of the new, modern space we have created is multifunctional so that it can be used either as a dining room or as a teaching area, which has been particularly useful for maximising the space available.”
Millthorpe, which has 1,000 students, is part of South Bank Academy Trust.
It is expected to grow student numbers in the coming years as housing is built at the former civil service and British Sugar areas. The £1.9m refurbishment project was funded by City of York Council.
