Helping provide extra places for Sutton students

Oaks Park High School is helping to provide extra secondary school places for Sutton children in the next few years…

There is a shortfall of local secondary school places for Sutton children across the next 6 years.  The shortfall averages 120 places per year and ranges from 30 to 200 places across the 6 years. 

Sutton secondary schools have offered to help for the next 6 years by taking additional pupils.  Oaks Park High School will offer up to 50 extra places in the years where there is high demand. 

Providing additional facilities

The school is aware of shortages in facilities such as dining and hall space,  toilets and changing rooms.  We have been granted capital grants by the Local Authority as part of the process to address the shortage of secondary school places.   

The school is already committed to providing the extra places regardless.  However, the new facilities will benefit both current and future students.

What are the extra facilities?

The new buildings will provide:

• Extra dining space in a new building adjacent to the sports hall.  We have very little indoor space and dining is very cramped and busy. 
• Toilets and changing rooms.  We are currently very short of both.
• A fitness gym as part of sports facilities.  This is something that could also be attractive to the local community.
• A hall area to support examination provision (freeing up the Sports Hall), allow more assemblies and year events, and be a centre for performance, art and community events.
• A Design Technology workshop area to provide more vocational experiences not possible within a classroom setting.

We are also hoping that we can provide SEND spaces as part of the new combined building and have submitted a bid to support this provision.

 

Where will these extra facilities be?

The Design Technology area, sited on hard standing near the car-park area has already been granted planning permission as has a two storey building adjacent to the Sports Hall. 

The school also put in for planning permission for a third building to provide the multi-user hall area.  However, whilst sited on hardstanding, the school was advised to combine this with the proposed building next to the Sports Hall.  This will be closer to the other school buildings and avoid any disturbance to the green space and accompanying view.  

We have therefore put in a further planning application for a new combined building; this will "absorb" the existing two-storey building within it, should the application be successful.

All of the locations and finishes are designed to fit the environment, match existing buildings and have minimum impact on local residents.

You will find full information on the planning portal on the Sutton website from March 2023, but documents at the bottom of the page give an “at a glance” summary for the new combined building and where it is situated.

How do students and the school community gain?

• Admission preferences show that the school has more applications than spaces – and more first choices too.  Extra places will help more Sutton parents/carers get a Sutton school for their child.
• For our students, there will be more classes so that average class sizes stay the same.  However, more classes means more flexibility.  At Key Stage 4, this means more option courses can run. 
• More students in the school means that we have more resources  More resources means we can offer more help to our students, whether the most able or those needing emotional or academic support.
• Existing and new students will benefit from the extra facilities.
• There are additional facilities that can be used by the community. 

Comments or feedback

Thank you to those residents that responded to the initial information posted here last year.   We remain interested in any comments that will help us make sure that these changes work best for our students, their families and the local community.  If you have suggestions that you think will help with this, then please email the school on the school office address: office@oaksparkhigh.org.uk

This planning application should be available to view from March 2023.