A new secondary school has officially opened in its state-of-the-art building after years of delays.
The principal of Maritime Academy in Strood says the new facilities will provide children, staff, and families in the community with incredible opportunities.
The school is now open for 600 pupils in Years 7, 8 and 9, having previously been based at a temporary site in Twydall for the past two years.
Each September, a new cohort of pupils will join the school and eventually Maritime Academy will teach 1,100 students including those in a sixth form.
Across three floors the school is equipped with brand new DT spaces, with woodworking equipment and a laser cutter, and an extensive food technology room.
The school also boasts an array of sports facilities, top of the range science classrooms, and performing arts spaces.
Principal, Matt Evans, says the school is all about instilling a sense of community, responsibility and, as the school’s motto says, making excellence a habit.
He said: “We’ve got everything here that a student could want with their education. We have our beautiful hall for theatre, for drama, so we’ll be able to offer our school productions so we can get our families and our community involved with the plays and musical performances in our school.
“We’ve also got the lovely sports hall facilities that again we can open up to our community out of hours, so that our families and our students can really flourish in the Maritime Academy environment.
“We brought all of our students over to have a pre-tour back in July to show them the facility before we had our move over the summer and they were absolutely raring to go. They couldn’t wait to get into their new classrooms and see the new facilities that they’ve got at their fingertips.”
The new school is themed around Medway’s maritime heritage, with communal areas of the school referred to by shipping terminology and the school houses are called ‘fleets’, and each fleet is named after a ship built in Frindsbury.
Maritime Academy is a school within the Thinking Schools Academy Trust which has 10 schools in Kent, nine of which are in Medway.
Stuart Gardner, CEO of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust, said: “This has been almost a 10-year journey from when we started our application for opening the school.
“The Trust worked really hard with the department for education and the local authority to ensure children have all the right resources, they had all the right premises, they had access to the right equipment and the things that went with that.
“The contractors and our central team worked unbelievably hard to make sure the school was shipshape, to use the naval terminology around the Maritime Academy, and the kids came in and they have loved it from day one.
“The first few days was all about acclimatisation, new building, new place, a new way of doing things, but they have settled in brilliantly and I’ve had the pleasure of being here about three or four times over the course of the last couple of weeks.
“I’m really, really pleased with how the building’s working to support their education.”
The new buildings also feature a gym and other sport facilities on-site which will be open to the public during certain hours through Thinking Fitness, a family of gyms run by the trust.
