The Granville Academy at Woodville is in line for a £5 million injection of Government funds - providing major new sports, science, technology and fitness facilities.

The Derbyshire school has been selected by the Government's Education and Skills Funding Agency for the cash boost, which will provide a new sports hall, four science labs, two design and technology rooms and a fitness suite.

This body is responsible for funding education and skills for children, young people and adults across the country.

Work is set to begin at the Academy in the autumn term of 2018, and the school will receive full control of the new facilities by August 2020.

Current plans will see the design and technology block, garages and gym block, dating back to the 1970s, demolished.

Granville Academy in Woodville
Granville Academy in Woodville

The gym block will be among the first stages of construction, and will be removed to pave the way for the rest of the work. Pupils will be left with the school's second gym, dating to the 1950s, for sports sessions.

The new programme of building work will see a reduction in the sports facilities at the school for roughly 18 months.

Speaking at a public consultation event on the plans on Wednesday, April 25, vice-principal of the school, Duncan Jackson said: "The biggest disruption will be to physical education lessons. They're losing one indoor room, but the benefit is that in 18 months time, it'll be brilliant.

"PE staff know that, they'll come into the hall and do indoor hockey, along with table tennis and more. We have other facilities, when we timetable next year, we'll bear this in mind when deciding when we put classes on.

"We'll try to stagger the numbers and organise by the weather as well for when the kids need to be inside because of the rain.

"But that's part of our management of this. We started discussions for this in September last year, if not before. We've had lots of time to think about what we're going to do in preparation."

Principal of the school, Jo Kingswood said she is "thrilled" the students will be benefiting from the state-of-the-art facilities to bolster their learning.

The firm behind the building work is multi-national Keir Construction.

Representative from Keir, David Hughes said: "We'll end up being on the site for almost four months before anybody really sees anything. We've got a lot of enabling work to do, service diversion works before we can actually start building the new building.

"We'll start on site in the summer time, but steel work won't go up until January.

"This is just because of the nature of the site and services, like the heating, which has its mains, goes round some of the area that is going to be demolished.

"So we need to divert power to make sure none of the other buildings are affected during the course of our work."

Mr Jackson said the new investment was the largest since £500,000 was ploughed into re-cladding the building around five or six years ago.

All of the facilities and rooms will come fully fitted with equipment for specialist subjects, including science, design and technology or physical education.

A new two court tennis area will be built, which will comply to Sport England regulations. Full plans are yet to be discussed and shown to pupils.

Mr Jackson said: "'The pupils know about it, and they're really happy about it'. In terms of building, it's one of the best things that could happen to Granville.

"It's going to be great for the kids, we've got 18 months of putting up with the build but we'll manage that.

"The gyms and the design and technology block are from the 1950s building, so they are from the original building that the school started with.

"Now we're getting brand spanking new facilities and equipment. It's a win-win for everyone really.

"It's got to improve our reputation. With new facilities, people will look at us with the new equipment and it'll look really good.

"The staff are looking forward to it. The residents that have been in so far have been positive, I think primarily, the new building is at the back of the school, so there's only a couple of houses that will see anything of the new build. Everybody else is quite easily out of the way."