primary expansion? has anyone been through a school that expanded?

[bumbleandbumble]

After fighting very hard to get my child into my top choice primary in London, I have been told that my 1st and 2nd choices of schools are being expanded.

I am worried about the building works/disruption...not to mention losing the "know all the parents/children" feel.

Has anyone had experience of a school expanding? Did the building works bother the children? Did the school improve overall? What about ofsted?

but bumbleandbumble as you state yourself you are a foreigner, so are an enormous number of the people applying for school places in a country which just doesn't HAVE the school places any longer. LEAs are really struggling in the majority of the UK. Part of the problem with many of the school places being required due to immigration is that there isn't always warning of the demand for places either. I think there are actually very few schools which are not having some sort of expansion and at least if yours is an official expansion rather than accommodating bulge classes in the library/IT room (if there even was one in the first place)/hall/corridor/toilets (ok perhaps not quite that bad but not far off in some schools) then it will presumably be done properly. All the schools that have lost these facilities because they have had to expand whilst not officially expanding with new rooms etc will be jealous. The vast majority of schools in our town now seem to be 4 form entry and 5 form entry isn't unusual any longer. It isn't a big town either.

There is a seven form entry primary in Hounslow

half of all students will be non faith

Good. It should be more than half. It should be all of them. It is completely wrong in every way that you had the option to travel miles to a preferred school when equally committed non-religious parents did not. Faith should have no place at all in schools. It's a personal quirk that can be amply satisfied in leisure time.

Our school has expanded. Frankly, it's not as cosy and charming as before.
Standards of behaviour have dropped; I think due to the over crowding.

The LEA desperately needed school places. Ironically, an old factory, backing onto farmer's fields was closed and put up for sale. A few years before this expansion, it was pointed out by parents in the community that a bulge of kids was coming and this property was an opportunity. Turns out, it's a lot cheaper to shove ever more kids into the same space than it is to build a new school. Meanwhile, the brown field site is now 14 executive homes.

Actually @tiggytape when you write that in London:

"There is no land, money or ability to build new schools"

I am not sure what you mean by ability unless you are referring to the Political decision -some would call idealogical - to not permit local authorities to open new schools. But for "land and money" I would point out these two things are linked. The rising demand in London overall for places reflects the fact that there are jobs in London, wealth is being created here, and just has the political decsion has been made to spend billions on Crossrail (and quite right too!) so the decision could be made to spend the required money to acquire sites for schools bidding against the commercial interests who are competing to acquire land for their own purposes.

Hang on a minute.. this is not a debate about faith versus non faith schools!
Faith schools exist, and I am glad they do. I am happy to have my children's faith and the idea of community linked between church and school. I am also happy that the faith schools often perform better (not always! but in many cases)...

If you are bitter because my faith has opened up my choices, well thats your problem and you should open the debate to abolishing faith schools...but its another discussion.

What I am writing about is the ability of a council to carry out vast expansions within a time frame without jeopardising the children's education.

And before you start blaming immigrants... my whole family has british citizenship (been here for 10 years) its just that my husband and I both come from very international families and we have experience with many foreign countries systems and education... so its easy to compare and judge from an outside view.

"Our school has expanded. Frankly, it's not as cosy and charming as before.
Standards of behaviour have dropped; I think due to the over crowding."

this is precisely what concerns me!

We are only in Y1, but the school was expanded over the summer before we started Reception, and the works completed by November.
So we went from a 60 place intake, with a bulge class, to a 90 place intake over the summer holidays and 2 months at the start of the school year.

Yes, there was disruption, but it was all very well controlled, with alternatives to where places which were inaccessible, and the kids were well aware of which parts of the yard was out of action.

Many of the kids loved watching things grow and change around them, and the builders were great at explaining what was going on.

I don't know how the feel of the school has changed, but the head has aged about 10 years over the build period.

Why don't primary schools go upwards? I've only ever seen one 2 story primary, apart from mine, and in Hong Kong, where they are about 10 stories tall. Or are they multi story in London already?

There is a plan that involves going upward...with roof playgrounds.

I never said non faith children will make the school less good!! thats a total mis-read...

I am worried about the school becoming less good for any reason...which is why I was asking... "has anyone been through this and what were the effects on the school?"

as you can see from some of the responses there have been negative effects in some cases following expansion...faith school or not doesn't matter.

Actually roof playgrounds are a really good idea: otherwise that part of the "footprint" is just not used....