The current Les Quennevais School, which has educated thousands of children during its 56-year history, is closing its doors for good on Thursday.
From September pupils will be taught at a new £40 million state-of-the art facility that has been built on fields that border La Route de Quennevais. A new school was needed as the current building, which opened in 1965 to teach a maximum of 450 pupils, is now too small for its cohort of 780 students.
The school closed to pupils on Friday last week, but staff will remain on-site until Thursday to facilitate the move to the new building.
Plans to celebrate the closing of the current school and the move to the current site have had to be scaled back due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the milestone was marked by teachers giving students a guard of honour as they left the school for the final time on Friday while staff were also addressed by the Chair of Governors on Monday morning.
Sarah Hague, who has been headteacher at the school since 2013 and has worked at Les Quennevais since 1997, said: “This is a historic and long-awaited moment for our community in the west of the Island. The new Les Quennevais School will truly be a school for the future – we are redefining how a school should look and feel.
“It will inspire and drive the ambition of a whole new generation and transform the experiences of our staff and students. We are hugely excited, proud and feel truly privileged to at last have the facilities that match the outstanding teaching that we deliver day in day out.
“We know we are extremely lucky that the Government of Jersey has supported the vision for learning that we have at our school and has not compromised on the design and the facilities, which we as staff and our students, have been very fortunate to have played a major part in creating.
“I cannot wait to see the children’s faces when they join us in September, they are going to be astonished, let’s not forget this is all for them! It has been a once in a lifetime opportunity, which we have certainly made the most of.”
The Minister for Education, Senator Tracey Vallois, said: “For more than half a century Les Quennevais School has been at the very heart of the Red Houses community, with thousands of pupils having fond memories of their times spent at the school.
“However, the opening of the new facility is not only an exciting milestone for the school but also for the Island as a whole as it marks the single biggest capital investment in education in Jersey’s history. I wish the pupils and staff at Les Quennevais a very happy future at their new site.”
Government of Jersey News Release.