A Mansfield school will receive support from the County Council to manage a “bulge year” when the area must cope with more year seven children needing school places than expected.
The Manor Academy, in Mansfield Woodhouse, needs to accommodate 30 extra pupils from September, new papers show.
It comes as the Mansfield district experiences a “shortfall” in capacity for the number of new pupils going up to secondary school.
Feasibility assessments of the school site, in Park Hall Road, will review whether the school is capable of taking on extra space.
Any expansion of the school would be temporary, with extra space to support another 30 pupils in short-term classrooms.
These classrooms, papers say, would be based on the school site for five to seven years “while a bulge year passes through the school”.
The Two Counties Trust, which operates the school, will be in control of the potential temporary expansion.
The project is initially costing £20,000 from Nottinghamshire County Council to assess the wider school site.
On completion of surveys, the authority says further cash will be requested from the trust to provide the extra learning spaces.
Other schools in the area were approached by the authority, it says, but this was “not successful”.
Councillor Ben Bradley MP (Con), the council’s leader and Mansfield’s MP, also represents the Mansfield North division where the school is based.
He says it’s partly the result of shifts in birth rates leaving a higher-than-anticipated number of pupils in the current cohort.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Birth rates go up and down and there are long-term and short-term trends we manage across the system.
“In this case, we’ve got this temporary bulge and it wouldn’t be sensible to invest in long-term capacity as we won’t need it in a few years.
“But I’m pleased we’re able to support this short-term challenge.
“What we have seen across the country is fewer applications – not more – into primary schools and, in a few years, this will feed into secondary schools.
“We need to bear that in mind when we’re looking at place planning.
“We don’t want to end up building lots of expensive, long-term projects now just to find they’re empty in 10 years.
“It’s a complex picture but I’m pleased we’ve been able to offer that short-term support and enable Manor Academy to adapt.”
The initial £20,000 to conduct surveys of the school site was approved during a delegated decision by Cllr Keith Girling (Con), cabinet member for asset management, on Monday (June 19).
