THERE will be plenty of hanging around for classes at the new Blackburn Central High School come September.

The £24million school, which will see Blakewater College and Crosshill School join forces, is on track to open its doors to its 760 pupils in the new academic year.

And with a specially designed pod suspended above the main hall for small group work, pupils will be eager to make the most of the new building, in Haslingden Road.

Other exciting features include outdoor art studios, all-weather sports pitches, recording studios and workshops to give students aged 11 to 16 a taste of the world of work.

Alan Chambers, headteacher at Blakewater College, said: “We are having a phased entry in September. The staff are in for three days to familiarise themselves and then we will phase in the students.

“It is a mixture between exciting and scary. This is new to everybody, staff included.

“There is a massive amount of work gone into it, it looks like a building site at the moment, but to see how much it has come on is just absolutely amazing.

“One of my favourite bits is the amount of natural light, it is absolutely awesome. It is really important for the kids to have somewhere bright and airy to learn.”

The new school will be slightly smaller than Blakewater College, but, with its open space and huge glass windows, Blackburn Central, one of the last projects to be built under the Building Schools for the Future programme, is among the most modern in the country.

The project was set up under the last Labour government to build and improve secondary school buildings.

Other schools built under the scheme include Shuttleworth College, in Burnley, and Pendle Community High School, both of which opened in 2008.