THE construction of four new classrooms is underway at a Blackburn school following a rise in admissions.

Building crews at Blackburn Central High School with Crosshill are currently putting up two new classrooms to be used by Crosshill students and two which will go in the main BCHS building. 

Both schools have been located in Haslingden Road since 2012 after Crosshill, which caters students with learning difficulties, moved from Shadsworth Road. 

BCHS has seen an 18 per cent increase in admissions since 2012 while the 60-place Crosshill school was oversubscribed for the first time last year.

Andrew James, marketing manager, said: “BCHS with Crosshill has become a very popular school in Blackburn, we get a lot of positive feedback from students and parents.

“It’s not often you have students tweeting how they’ve loved the school year.

“I think the new signage we’ve added in Haslingden Road gets across our message about being welcoming to all.

“We’re very pleased about the rise in admissions and the expansion we are making.”

Up until now, the schools have shared classroom but the new work should ensure that this will not continue to happen much. 

At BCHS, a wall between two offices is currently being knocked down to create an extra classroom for modern foreign languages and a construction room is being repurposed into a more ‘traditional’ teaching space for the vocational department.

Meanwhile at Crosshill, the two new classrooms will be in a separate building so that the school will have seven rooms altogether.

There will be changes to the way Key Stage Three students are taught at Crosshill to make the high school transition easier for them.

Each group will now have one teacher for all subjects instead of several different ones which will aim to create more consistency in the curriculum and see students move around rooms much less.

New IT facilities will also be brought in including new computers and interactive whiteboards.