THE Lord Mayor of York dropped in to mark the official opening of a York infant school just ahead of the school summer holidays.

Cllr Barbara Boyce and the civic party joined hundreds of pupils, parents and teachers at Carr Infant School in Acomb yesterday for a party, balloon release and ribbon cutting ceremony to formally mark a new chapter in the life of the school.

Head teacher Sue Bell is retiring at the end of term and said the event fell at a fitting time for her personally.

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Mrs Bell said the school moved into their new school building in September 2016, but has waited for all the landscaping and outside space to be finished before inviting the Lord Mayor in to school.

She said: “The new building is a fantastic improvement on what we had before, first of all because there is no damp and and it’s nice and warm - it’s just a lovely modern learning environment.

“It has ten classrooms and there’s now two floors, which we didn’t have before in the old building.

“Other advantages include a PTA room for the staff to hold meetings, there’s wifi and all the classrooms now have interactive boards and there are two tech rooms as well as an SEN room. It’s been hard work over the last five years getting to this point, but now we have a wonderful place for the children to learn.

“During the first year, we have been working hard to develop the outdoors after the old building was demolished.

“The outdoors are now looking much better and even though we still have a bit more to do, the pupils can now enjoy our new play facilities as well as the building itself.”

Mrs Bell has been head teacher at the school for the last 11 years and has been teaching for a total of 39 years, and decided to retire from Carr Infant School this academic year.

Work was carried out after a successful application to the Government’s Priority School Building Programme and City of York Council is providing additional funding.

The success of the school - which recently got a good rating from inspectors Ofsted, with an outstanding rating for early years provision - has meant that over time it has grown in popularity and as a result the demand for places had increased from the old building’s 240-pupil capacity.

The new building has a capacity for 270 KS1pupils from Reception to Year 2, with each year group having three classes.