Huntingdon school marks its first decade

A SCHOOL has celebrated its 10th anniversary by opening a new outdoors learning area.

Cromwell Park Primary’s new Learning Lodge will give young people the chance to be taught outside in a bid to improve their learning and give them greater variety from being taught within a classroom.

The Parkway school opened in 2002 with fewer than 50 children but has since grown to the point where today it is over-subscribed and recently had a mobile classroom installed to help cope with the increasing demand.

In that time, headteacher’s PA Sarah Noakes said, the primary had become a strong part of the community with an ethos for “educating the whole child”.

“We want to take the child when they join and develop them in every area, not just the academic but also in personal and life skills,” she said.

“We focus on helping them to make good progress in all areas of their life.”

Ground-breaking technologies have also been incorporated into the building, from state-of-the-art computer facilities to rainwater recycling and the use of solar energy.

“The building, however, is only one part of the story,” headteacher Stephanie Barnard said. “A school is not a school without the people who work in it – the staff, the governors, the parents and, most importantly, the children.

“We strive to be a school working within and for our community.”

Ms Noakes said the school wanted to “continue to be part of the community” by remaining as a “constant” in a changing neighbourhood where families and people came and went but the school stayed as a focal point.