Officials back sixth form bid

2:10pm Tuesday 19th August 2008

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PLANS for a new £4 million sixth form for York teenagers look set to win the go-ahead from councillors.

City of York Council’s East Area planning committee is due to meet on Thursday to discuss a new sixth form at Archbishop Holgate’s CE School, in Hull Road, with officers recommending approval.

The new scheme, which will be called the Learning Centre@AHS, is due to open in September 2009.

It involves a two-storey curved roof learning centre with landscaping, parking and bike storage.

The design is by Hull-based architects Morgan Lloyd Jones, who are responsible for designing the new Manor CE School building in the west of the city.

The Press reported last month the school received £4 million from the Learning And Skills Council, as a 90 per cent grant towards the £4.3 million cost of the building work.

The current proposal is to start a post-16 pilot at the school in September this year, building to accommodate 160 16 to 18-year-olds at the new centre by 2013, in addition to the 850 pupils the school currently has on roll.

There will be a particular focus on the new diplomas which head teacher John Harris said offered a combination of academic and applied learning and are increasingly becoming very highly regarded both by employers and by the top universities. The £4 million grant follows an invitation from the Government to Archbishop Holgate’s, which recently gained an outstanding Ofsted, to add provision for pupils aged 16 to 19, and formal approval by the city council in December.

The school will find the remaining ten per cent of funding itself, and an appeal is being planned to help reach the target.

The bid won the support of Askham Bryan College and York High School, in Acomb.

But Canon Lee School, in Clifton – which, like York High School, does not have a sixth form – and York College both spoke out against the proposals.

From September, the school will offer post-16 courses in engineering and work-based learning.

A wide variety of additional courses are under discussion for the full launch of the new learning centre in September 2009 including science, information and communication technology, creative and media, and business administration and finance.

A wide variety of additional courses are under discussion for the full launch of the new learning centre in September 2009, including science; information and communication technology; creative and media; and business administration and finance.