The school is housed in an older building that was never designed for the demands of modern education. In particular, there was a lack of breakout space for small-group work - something that has become increasingly important as schools provide more tailored support, especially for neurodiverse pupils.

Karly Dudesen, Deputy Head Teacher, explains that the school needed extra capacity to work in different ways for the pupils and staff who need it.

The school was clear from the start that this couldn’t feel like an afterthought.

“We were very adamant that we didn’t want it to just feel like a shed stuck on the side of the school. We wanted it to be a proper, valuable, beautiful space.”

When it was complete, that’s exactly how it was received - by staff and pupils alike.

The new building is bright, airy and air-conditioned, with a calm, peaceful interior. Just as importantly, it’s acoustically separate from the rest of the school. In a busy part of the site, it shuts out corridor noise, road traffic and the carry of PE lessons or assemblies.

“This building is built to the demands of what a modern education system needs. Those things may seem small, but they make a big contribution to the children’s ability to focus when the space is so nice to be in.”

Over the past year, the building has served as a second teaching space, allowing a small group to work with a qualified teacher for most of the year at a level suited to them. The results have been felt well beyond that group.

• Standards and progress have risen for the pupils taught in the room.

• Progress has also risen in the main classroom, where class sizes were effectively reduced - a “double benefit” for the school.

• Pupils who sometimes struggle in a mainstream classroom have a quieter, smaller setting to learn in.

“The impact is felt beyond just the immediate users. For us, it has been worth every penny.”

The building has become a genuine multi-use space for the whole school community:

• A weekly parent workshop every Friday morning, where parents learn strategies to support learning at home.

• Meetings with visiting educational professionals.

• Governor and staff meetings.

• A calm base for pupils who find unstructured playtimes difficult - somewhere to work, play and simply be.

Staff have nicknamed the building “the Nest”, and it’s now the most sought-after room in school. Intervention and small-group sessions are quick to book it, and one teacher co-teaching with the Year 6 class used to joke that she had the best space in the school.

“There’s often a little bit of a fight between teachers about who gets to use it. There’s always “Are you in the Nest? Can I use the Nest?””

Because the building was new and self-contained, there was no battling against existing building work or wiring - a very clean process from start to finish. The speed of the build, from groundwork through to completion, meant the school could capitalise on the excitement and get the space into use quickly. Pupils spent the build peeping out of the windows to see what was arriving next.

Karly’s message to other schools is simple: “Save up and do it.”

School budgets are stretched, but she is clear that the investment has paid off - so much so that the school would like a couple more buildings on site in time.

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