£82m to Fund Extra School Places

Hertfordshire County Council’s school place planners have made an additional 30 places available in the reception class at Killigrew Primary School in Chiswell Green from this September.

The extra places for four to five-year-olds will give more children the opportunity to attend a local school who would otherwise have had to travel several miles.

Alterations will be made to classrooms already in place at Killigrew, which is on West Avenue in St Albans, to make them suitable for the new arrivals.

Executive Member for Education, Richard Thake, welcomes the extra places:

“This is a step in the right direction for an area experiencing an unprecedented increase in demand. Hertfordshire County Council’s planning officers are assessing every primary school in the area to ensure that any existing school site with the potential for enlargement is being used to its full potential.

"We are also working hard with St Albans District Council to identify a suitable site for a new primary school to serve sixty children per year group for the city centre.

"I completely understand parents frustration at not being able to secure local primary school places for their children. Providing good, local primary schools in Hertfordshire children is a key priority for me and my colleagues and we are determined to ease the current pressure on places as quickly as possible.”

These places are in addition to the approximately 330 additional school places that have been created in St Albans and Watford since 2008.

Schools already accepting more pupils are:

Bernard’s Heath Infant
Mandeville Primary
Margaret Wix Primary
Cunningham Hill Infant
Mount Pleasant Lane
Sauncy Wood
St Helen’s
Holywell Primary
Cassiobury Infant
Beechfield Primary
Laurance Haines Primary
Oxhey Wood Primary