ALBANY school officially closes today and will be replaced by a private academy.

Oasis Academy Hadley, which is the second Oasis Academy to open in the borough, run by Christian organisation the Oasis Trust, is being officially opened today in the school’s existing site in Bell Lane, Enfield.

The school will then move to Ponders End as part of the council’s “placeshaping” or regeneration programme and is expected to open there in 2012.

The school is named after John Hadley, a mathematician, and will have a specialism in maths with information communications technology, and a second specialism in music.

Albany school, along with Aylward and Salisbury, was named on a Government “hitlist” of failing schools in June 2008, which were told to improve or face closure.

Oasis says it aims to create “hubs” of activity in a local area as a “holistic” approach to “meeting the breadth of human needs, whether that’s educational, economical, physical, spiritual, social or environmental.”

According to the Oasis website, these are defined as “hubs of activity in which we provide integrated and diverse services in order to benefit the whole person and the whole community.”

The Oasis Trust also runs the Oasis Academy Enfield in Mollison Avenue.