Tring School – Finally in the New Building!
After years of planning and then building, the students and staff of Tring School are finally in their fabulous new building! On Thursday 16 December 2021 they had their last day in the old school buildings. Over Christmas and the new year a lot of the furniture, equipment, materials etc was moved over into the new building and then on Tuesday 11 January the children and the staff had their first school day in the new facilities.
The day started with every tutor group trying to find their way around the new facilities. The three-storey building takes some getting used to and navigation and memory skills are definitely required. All routes eventually lead back to the dining hall which is a fabulously bright and airy atrium that can seat 340 students for lunch or an assembly.
Other highlights include state of the art science labs, fantastic design and technology rooms (on top of which are kiln and dark rooms), a well stocked Learning Resource Centre and on the third floor the Sixth Form Centre with fabulous double-aspect views of the Chilterns.
The school also invested heavily in a bespoke space for student support. This is unique amongst recently built schools and includes spaces for the Heads of Houses, counselling services, emotional support and careers advice.
Other stand-out features includes the double height activity studio (half-sprung wooden floor, mirrored wall with ballet barres, sound and visual system) and a hugely impressive sports hall (grey ‘pulastic’ flooring with multiple sports markings, high spec cricket nets and mats, electronic scoreboard, socket/post system for badminton, futsal, netball and handball) and ‘swing out’ basketball hoops. All of these facilities are available to the community as well as the school and will be fully integrated with the swimming pool in due course.
Work has now started on the demolition of the original school frontage and the subsequent added art and D&T blocks. Once this is complete a landscaped car park will be constructed featuring boulevards of trees, specially selected shrubs and discreet down lighting. This will also be brilliant news for the school’s neighbours as it will take school buses and many cars off of the road at the start and the end of the day.
The students are without doubt loving their new facilities. All of the teaching spaces feature extremely large windows which allow an optimum amount of natural light into the rooms. Temperature is controlled by sophisticated and highly efficient technology to make it one of the most energy efficient buildings in the country.
So, it’s taken seven years but it’s been worth the wait – the new Tring School building is FABULOUS!!