Usually the last month represents a gentle winding down towards the holidays, with the focus on school journeys, sports day, rewards outings and suchlike. These have duly taken place this year as usual. However alongside these welcome normalities Hampton Academy in recent weeks has seen a frenzy of activity to ensure that 40% of our school building is stripped and ready for action on 16th July. The site is awash with boxes and skips, normally well-dressed teachers have been spotted wearing Mrs. Mop headscarves and overalls, and even oblivious children who can trample over a Herries fence without noticing its existence are being brought up short by large metal grills, pillar foundations and men in fluorescent lime tabards and hard hats.Yes, the builders are in — and in a few days time they´ll be joined by the bulldozers!
It´s hard to shed many tears for the loss of the Art block, an undistinguished early 70s building that apparently began life as the ‘ROSLA´ centre (does anybody out there remember ROSLA? — Raising of the School Leaving Age — from 15 to 16) but it does feel like the end of an era when a part of the school where generations of young people have created and learned is destroyed. However such sentiment fades every time I see the architect´s fly-through of our superb new buildings, the first of which are due to open in September 2012, accommodating both our lower colleges. It is difficult in any case to be nostalgic about the joys of learning maths in M2 or M3, rooms designed in the 1930s when children must have been several inches shorter and narrower than they are today. And the brand new Wordsworth College Hub in our temporary accommodation will be far more splendid than the thinly disguised former Seclusion Room which currently houses it.
It´s a good moment to pause and pay tribute to the unsung heroes of this whole process — the uncomplaining premises team of Jonathan, Ken and Mick, who have responded endlessly and tirelessly to request after request with remarkable patience and good humour. Thanks also to Greg Hayes for co-ordinating all the moves and to the very many teachers and support staff who have spent so much time (almost all of it outside lessons) sorting and packing and recycling.
When school reopens to students on 5th September we will have eight brand new teaching spaces for ICT, maths and humanities, co-located with the Wordsworth College Learning Zone and Hub. The Conrad College Hub relocates to the heart of the school next to the dining hall, but the College retains its spacious and well equipped learning zone upstairs. Kipling College continues unchanged.
July is also a time for farewells and this year we say goodbye to some ‘big players´ whose contributions to HCC, Hampton Academy, and in one case Rectory School, have made a lasting and substantial difference to the learning and achievement of Hampton´s children.
