Wates completes Edgar Wood Academy

Wates Construction has finished building the 72,300 sq ft secondary school in Greater Manchester, marking the culmination of a two-year project on behalf of the Department for Education.

The Edgar Wood Academy is located on Rochdale Road, Middleton. Designed by architect Sheppard Robson, the school has the capacity to hold 900 pupils aged between 11 and 16 years old.

It features 23 general classrooms and 34 specialist classrooms across three floors, as well as a sports hall, sports pitches, and soft and hard play areas. It is being operated by the Altus Education Partnership – a charitable institution and registered company.

The secondary school’s first cohort of 120 Year 7 students started last September. They were based at purpose-built temporary accommodation at Hopwood Hall College, around three miles away from the Edgar Wood Academy site. Those and future students have been based at the completed school since last month.

The project’s main contractor Wates secured the work through the DfE’s £3bn Modern Methods of Construction Framework, to which it was appointed in January 2020. The framework is part of a wider government move towards adopting innovative offsite construction methods to deliver much-needed new schools across the country. The Edgar Wood Academy is the first to complete of six secondary schools within the North West via the framework.

Dave Saville, managing director of Wates Construction North, said: “Edgar Wood’s completion provides a stellar example of how offsite construction can revolutionise the delivery of education builds.

Saville added: “The lessons learned on this build will support both Wates’ other DfE projects procured via the Modern Methods of Construction framework and help champion the use of MMC on other schemes across the country.”

• Watch Wates’  video of the completed Edgar Wood Academy 

“I am incredibly proud of our new state-of-the-art school, which is dedicated to providing an outstanding education for the families of Middleton and Heywood,” said Marcin Kojder, headteacher of Edgar Wood Academy.

“The building has amazing facilities, which allows the school to deliver an exciting, broad, and balanced curriculum. Our students have shown great resilience over the past few years in some very challenging circumstances. They now have a wonderful environment in which to learn, something they richly deserve.”

Patrick Heisel, projects director at the DfE, added: “We are excited and proud of the new facilities that have been provided to meet the educational needs of families in the Rochdale community, and we look forward to welcoming students from the surrounding areas to their new school.”

Another MMC scheme Wates is delivering through the DfE framework – Star Salford Academy off Longshaw Drive in Little Hulton is part of the ongoing DfE’s Free School Programme. The six-acre site has been vacant since Hulton High School was demolished in 2009.

Once complete, the Sheppard Robson-designed Star Salford Academy will house 750 pupils within a 62,000 sq ft two-storey building. In addition to teaching spaces, there will also be a hard-court multi-use games area, all-weather pitch, and sports hall facility.

Wates is aiming to complete construction in time for the start of the 2023-2024 academic year.

Other education sector projects Wates has delivered within the North West include the 900-student Whitehaven Academy in Cumbria and the Hartford Church of England School in Northwich.