Schools/colleges

PUPILS have celebrated the opening of a new primary school in Bedfont this week.

The former Bedfont Infant School and Bedfont Junior School merged over the Christmas holidays to become one 450-child school.

Students at Feltham Skills Centre helped build their own workshop by laying a concrete base.

The 16 and 17-year-olds helped lecturers and contractors lay the 60sq m floor for a new brickwork workshop last week to get experience of working on site.

The students at the college in Boundaries Road stopped only once to enjoy a hot drink and pasty made freshly by the centre's catering class.

Motor mechanics students at Feltham Skills Centre are working with new tools worth £18,000.

The West Thames College-run centre in Boundaries road received the industry-standard tools at a fraction of the original cost thanks to a partnership with Snap-on Tools.

Programme manager Lloyd Davis said: "The educational link with Snap-On Tools is fantastic for our motor vehicle students as they are being trained on the same industry leading tools and equipment as they'd find in a professional garage."

A Christmas bazaar will be held at Marjorie Kinnon school in Bedfont on Saturday November 28.

All are welcome at the school in Hatton Road between 2pm and 4.30pm. Entry costs 50p, with all proceeds going towards trips for the children with learning difficulties who attend the special school.

A new pre-school has opened in Bedfont in a bid to tackle the poor development of young children in the area.

Little Treasures opened next to Bedfont Junior School in Hatton Road this term to provide child care and early education for children before they reach school age.

A Hounslow Council report earlier this month expressed shock that too many children were turning up to school aged five still in nappies, unable to communicate and lacking basic co-ordination.

Early predictions are suggesting that Feltham Community College's GCSE results might have earned it the title of Britain's most improved school.

Jubilation filled the school hall as 42% of pupils achieved five A*-C grades including maths and English compared with just 24% last year.

The struggling school has experienced a remarkable turnaround since head teacher Victoria Eadie took over last September and teachers who have taught at the Browell's Lane school for years were amazed at the results.

Forty-one percent of 11-year-olds in Feltham and Bedfont are overweight and in some schools more than a quarter of children are clinically obese, a study has revealed.

The figures presented to Hounslow councillors last week were described by one
expert as 'frightening'. He warned childhood obesity in the borough was a 'time bomb waiting to explode'.

A measurement programme of Year 6 pupils found that 41% of Feltham and Bedfont schoolchildren are overweight or obese - compared with 33% nationally - while 30% of local Reception age pupils were overweight - against the 23% national average.

Feltham Rotary Club has delivered over 600 illustrated dictionaries to Year 5 children in schools throughout Feltham, Bedfont and Hanworth.

Over the last two weeks, local Rotarians visited 10 schools in the area and gave each child a dictionary to keep as part of a Rotary international literacy scheme.

Last Wednesday they visited Victoria Junior School in Feltham where Rotarian Daphne Cass assisted by Rosemary Gibbs distributed the dictionaries at a school assembly that coincided with a Class 5 concert for parents.

The dictionaries have been provided by the Rotary Club of Feltham from funds raised locally through a grant from The Office of the Third Sector managed by the Thames Community Foundation.

Delighted youngsters enjoyed an early burst of Easter yellow in their classrooms last week thanks to 10 tiny chicks who hatched at Bedfont Juniors.

The eggs were on loan to the school from the Living Eggs programme, which works to put youngsters in touch with nature.

Head teacher Ann Broughton said: "The chicks have been great fun. They grow so fast and the children have been absolutely entranced."

A £20 million scheme to replace Feltham People's Centre with a new state-of-the-art college is still hanging in the balance after the Government deferred its decision.

The Learning Skills Council, who were lined up to pay for the ambitious building project, announced last week that they were again deferring their funding decisions on several schemes including the new Feltham Skills Centre.