Cordwalles School receives charity boost for new facilities

​Pupils at Cordwalles Junior School in Camberley have been learning that not only does charity start at home, it also starts at school after they managed to secure a grant from the Big Lottery fund to transform a disused building into a new teaching facility.

​Thanks to that Lottery money, along with a grant from the Capital Improvement Fund and the Ogden Trust – an organisation dedicated to the promotion of the teaching of physics – the old building on the school’s Berkshire Road site is being updated to include a music and drama studio, food technology and science rooms, amongst other things.

Cordwalles’s Deputy Head Sarah Nottrodt said it was a real coup for the entire school to have secured funding for such a hugely useful multi-purpose facility.

“It’s really exciting that we’re managing to update the building in such a way. It will add so much to school life,” she explained. “One of the things we are striving to promote at the school is healthy lifestyles, so having a dedicated food technology area is wonderful. It will link beautifully with our edible landscape project which encourages pupils to grow their own herbs and vegetables. The child-centred interactive ‘Phiz lab’ science facility that is being funded by the Ogden Trust will be ready for the start of the autumn term and will be a huge bonus for the whole school as we can really concentrate on delivering top notch science teaching.”

It is not just Cordwalles which will benefit from the Ogden Trust’s generosity. The school is a member of the Surrey-based GLF Schools multi-academy trust, which runs more than a dozen schools across the south east, and Cordwalles along with two other GLF schools – Hillcroft and Danetree – will all be recipients of funding to support their physics teaching.

“It is such brilliant news, for Cordwalles and the wider GLF group,” Mrs Nottrodt said. “GLF is the first multi-academy trust that the Ogden Trust has worked with, so it’s an amazing opportunity for us all.”