New music suite planned for school

12:24pm Friday 3rd December 2004

THE PURCELL School will be bringing in the new year with a bang if a planning application to build a new £2.5 million music centre gets the go ahead.

Housing a concert space, a music technology suite and a large number of teaching and practicing rooms, the plans for the independent music school will be discussed by Hertsmere Borough Council's development control committee on Wednesday, December 15.

Having received a £500,000 capital grant from the Department for Education and Skills, the school has managed to bring in the rest of the £1.1 million raised via an appeal launched by the school's patron HRH Prince of Wales.

It hopes the remainder will be raised through gifts and donations.

Opening its doors to musically gifted children between the ages of nine and 18, the school offers a range of means tested grants including 100 per cent bursaries from the Department for Education and Skills Music and Dance Schools Aided Pupils Scheme.

One of only four specialist Music schools in the country, Purcell moved to the refurbished buildings of the old Royal Caledonian Schools in Aldenham Road, Bushey, from its original home in Harrow on the Hill in 1997. But despite the adaptation of existing buildings, the school's teachers feel that the site lacks essential purpose-built music spaces.

Spenser Pitfield, a teacher of wind instruments at the school, said: "This new building is necessary because we lack the facilities that we need to be able to teach to the level that we would like to.

"In any given week we give up to 600 instrumental lessons. Hence the need for individual teaching rooms."