Thursday 1 March 2018

New School


Clearing field
Over the past 30 years KISC has led a relatively nomadic existence being located at 5 different locations. As we said in our last blog, the longest was Dhobighat, where it had been from January 2008 until it closed there on February 8 2018.

Then on February 9 we set to work, packing and moving. The move was supposed take 12 days with reopening on the 21 February. However, due to some slight delays in the building process we made the decision to push back the reopening to the 26 February. This meant students had a slightly longer than anticipated half term break – just over 2 weeks.

Ready for students
This was a strange couple of weeks. Initially intense as we packed up and the movers started moving things up. Then a lull as rooms weren’t ready as we anticipated meaning we’d moved more stuff than the site was ready to receive. Then disappointment as we knew it wouldn’t be ready in time. Then anxiousness as we wondered whether we would make the new date, then frantic as we completed moving and getting rooms ready.

Finished Main building
Last Sunday, the 25th, we had all staff on site completing the final touches. The school hall had been used as a dumping ground for spare furniture and maintenance materials and PE equipment (the room they were supposed to be in was being used as a paint store by the builders). A large group of staff spent the morning clearing this stuff out into other temporary storage and then cleaning the hall ready for use on Monday. The staff spread out over the field to check for and clear any last remaining rubbish from the builders and we went through the routines for the Monday.

I arrived at the school on Monday morning, to find that there had been some last minute work leaving a mess in the corridors of the secondary. A group of teachers and our cleaning staff quickly set to work sweeping the corridors while I led a whole school assembly in the hall to mark the opening.
Primary Lunchtime
Then we set the students loose on the school. They are enjoying the new site, especially the space. Dhobighat was a small inner-city site. Now we have a large field, wide corridors, and the site is spread out enough that when you are sat in the eating area having lunch, you can’t hear the primary students playing!

Of course there were and remain, teething issues. Enough water for the toilets being a headache on Monday and fluctuating electrical supplies. The contractors doing the network hadn’t quite finished so we’ve had to remember again how to teach with less technology, and so on.

Lessons in progress
The site has been described as looking like a college campus and we’ve still got a basketball court coming next week and a covered sports ground in about 6 weeks. Discussions in the staff room this week have included rainwater harvesting, a mountain bike track around the site, having a pond, an outdoor amphitheatre classroom, a kitchen garden and space for forest school. All on the site! It’s amazing!