With the start of the new school year looming ever closer, Janet Hewison visited Canon Lee School in York to look at progress on multi-million pound building work to double its size.

IT is hard to imagine that pupils will be sitting down to lessons at Canon Lee School in only two weeks' time, as builders swarm around the site working inside and out to get the building ready.

The courtyard between the old building and the new extension behind is still rubble, as is the new car park behind the extension, which looks out over the fields towards Water Lane.

But a closer look inside shows that work is nearing completion on what is the biggest school building project to have taken place in York to date.

Canon Lee School is being extended to cater for up to 900 pupils following the decision to close Queen Anne School and in response to the huge amount of house-building going along Water Lane and in Rawcliffe.

Building work on a new three-storey block started at Christmas and has intensified over the summer holiday. The second phase of the £4.1 million project will include a new sports hall and community rooms and is due to start during the next school year.

Parents have just received letters from head teacher Kevin Deadman to say that the start of the new term, which was due to start on Thursday, September 7, will now be delayed until Monday, September 11.

Mr Deadman said the decision had been made on health and safety grounds after meetings with builders. He said the school had tried to let parents know about the delay as soon as possible. But he was now confident that the bulk of the new block would be ready for the start of term on the Monday, with all the pupils' lessons catered for.

Most of the rooms are already carpeted and decorated, with piles of new chairs and tables ready to be installed, shelves ready to go up in the library and new units in the food technology rooms.

The corridors have been designed with alternate blue floors and yellow lockers, or yellow floors with blue lockers, at the request of a group of Year Eight pupils who were given a design brief.

The whole school has been wired up with computer and telephone points and there is a new main entrance which looks out of the new building towards Water Lane.

A lot of equipment, furniture and books are being brought over from Queen Anne School and some is being transferred over from the old building, which is also getting a substantial refurbishment, including a dining room extension.

The space between the new building and the old is to be called Queen Anne Court and governors from Queen Anne have donated some money to pay for sculptures for the area.

The school will be taking in 182 new Year Seven pupils at the start of term, as well as 40 of the former Queen Anne pupils who are moving on to different secondary schools across the city, taking the school population up to 750. Sixteen new teachers will start the week before.

All the rooms in the school have been re-numbered and pupils have been sent a map to help them find their way around.

Mr Deadman said: "It really is looking good and I'm very pleased with the quality of the work. I'm very excited about it and I think it's going to be absolutely fabulous."

The new school year will also see the return of our regular term-time feature, School Report. Every week we visit a different primary school in the Evening Press circulation area and take a look at what's going on in the classrooms.

School Report appears every Wednesday and will be back on September 13. If you would like to see your local infant, junior or primary school highlighted, please contact Janet Hewison on 01904 567133 or by e-mail at janet.hewison@ycp.co.uk

PICTURE: £4.1 MILLION: Head teacher Kevin Deadman ponders the massive £4.1m building project under way at Canon Lee School in York