New secondary school for Newcastle's Great Park pushed back

The opening of a new secondary school on the Newcastle Great Park estate has been pushed back by another year.

Council bosses have confirmed that the proposed Great Park Academy earmarked for the huge development site in the north of the city will not be ready until 2023.

In the meantime, the school will open in 2021 in a temporary council-funded building at the Gosforth Academy which was constructed to cope with the urgent shortage of school places in Newcastle.

The new middle/secondary school will be run by Gosforth Group Multi Academy Trust and cater for Year 5 to Year 11 pupils.

It was originally due to open in September this year, before the target date was pushed back to 2022 due to major delays in securing planning permission for the next phase of development at the Great Park.

In a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, Newcastle City Council confirmed another 12-month setback and said progress on building new schools across the city had been complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The council also confirmed that parents of children currently in Year 4 who want to apply for their child to join the Great Park Academy in Year 5 at its temporary home from 2021 will be given two extra months to do so.

Secondary school transfer applications are due by this Saturday, October 31, but applications for the Great Park Academy will be considered up to December 31 because of the delays.

A relocation Broadway East First School to a new building on the Great Park now has planning permission and work is expected to start early next year, due to be completed in 2022.

Coun Paula Holland, the council’s cabinet member for education and skills, said: “We are delighted that the new building that was recently completed at Gosforth Academy will be used from September 2021 as the temporary home for the new Great Park Academy until their permanent site is built at Newcastle Great Park.

“This is a direct result of the investment and joint working by the City Council and Gosforth Group and thanks to the Robertson Group for delivering the scheme to a very high standard of quality under what have been very difficult circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Plans to build both the first school and a large secondary school on the Great Park estate were first proposed in 2016.