Attending a new school is a unique experience. My school is very different from normal schools. I go to Merstham park school, it is a new school that opened in summer 2018. I am part of the first year to attend it and have always been the oldest year group there. We have a temporary site which we work on and the new school building is due to be finished by September 2022. The school has faced many challenges and is still carrying on. One of them being the death of our beloved head teacher. 

 

Life on a temporary site is very interesting, it has positives and negatives. An upside is that my year group contains around ninety children, so I know everyone and the teachers know us all personally. It means we get more attention throughout the years. For example, in Year seven, we had one teacher for each subject and we received a lot more time and attention. Of course as the school began to grow, we received less attention but still enough. I have teachers I’ve known for the past three years who I can go to if I need help.

 

A disadvantage of having a temporary site is that we don't get as many facilities as a fully built school would, such as a sports hall or enough space to hold certain events (such as large assemblies, performances and fairs). Because there are less people, many clubs don’t have enough students to attend and we don't get the level of training we could have received. An example of this is the netball team. We don't have a netball court or enough space to practice which is a great disadvantage when it comes to matches against other schools.

I Think learning in a temporary site and a growing school is an experience that not many people get to have and I am grateful to be able to have that.