New School for Cawdor Pupils
A new £4.7 million primary school at Cawdor opened its doors today (Thursday) to staff and 120 pupils, who were piped from the old school to the new accompanied by members of the community.
Youngest pupil, Josh Lockley (4) was joined by former pupil and school historian, Dan Morrison, now in his 80s, in cutting a ribbon at the new school and ringing the school bell which has been relocated at the new school.
The new school features six primary classrooms, a resource and library area, a pupil support room, a nursery room with it own enclosed play area, a large multi-purpose hall with a separate general purpose hall to be used as a dining room, cloakrooms, toilets and showers. Outside there is a hard play area and grass pitch as well as a cycle compound, car parking spaces and a drop off zone.
The school also has dedicated space for use by the local community including a community room and a kitchen, a playgroup room and another meeting room. The main hall is also larger than normal with extra storage so it can be used by the community in evenings, weekends and non school days.
Fiona Lewthwaite, Head Teacher of the school said: “This is a tremendous event in the history of Cawdor Primary School. The facilities this new building gives us create opportunities that our learning community could only dream about. We feel very privileged to have such a fantastic school and look forward to welcoming all our pupils to a bright new school and future.”
The Highland Council’s Director of Education, Culture and Sport, Hugh Fraser, said: “The old school has served the community of Cawdor well over the last 150 years but now we can provide the very best learning environment for the pupils and our staff. Foremost in our minds at the planning stage was that the new school should be a focus for the whole community so dedicated facilities for community use have been incorporated into the design. This makes the new school the hub of this growing and vibrant community.”
Cawdor is one of 11schools being built by Alpha Schools (Highland) Ltd, a consortium of Morrison PLC and Noble Fund Managers, in a second education PPP scheme, valued at £134 million. Resolis and Culbokie primary schools opened in April of this year. Inverness Gaelic Primary School and Inshes Primary School opened on Tuesday.
Next year; Portree High and Dingwall Academy will open in May; Kinlochleven Primary and Kinlochleven High School and Drummond School, Inverness, will open in June; and Millburn Academy, Inverness, will open in September.
ENDS