FARNHAM Heath End School will only be allowed to expand if additional facilities are put in place to benefit both existing and new pupils, headteacher Nick Phillips has said.

Surrey County Council, in partnership with the school’s governing body, recently consulted parents, staff, residents and other stakeholders on plans to increase the school’s Published Admissions Number (PAN) from 190 to 220 from September 2018.

The school has since met with the county council’s architects to discuss what material improvements are required to cater for larger pupil numbers, and a fully-costed feasibility study is set to go before Surrey’s cabinet for final approval in February.

If the expansion gets the go ahead, the school will ultimately provide 1,100 places for children aged 11 to 16, 180 more than the school currently takes in.

However, as Farnham Heath End School (FHES) is an academy school, the school’s governors must also formally endorse the expansion, and this will likely hinge on the scale of improvements proposed by Surrey in the new year.

Headteacher Mr Phillips told The Herald: “Our governors’ comments so far have been that this is about improving the facilities for our current students as well as future students.

“What we wouldn’t do is say we will expand our PAN if that meant that we didn’t get some improved facilities. The two have to go hand in hand.

“We ideally would like to improve our sports facilities and then some of our existing facilities could be remodelled to do other things. But we have to see what the final plans are from Surrey, who will be funding it entirely.”

An expansion of FHES was first mooted in 2009, ahead of an anticipated bulge in the secondary school population in September 2013. This never materialised in FHES’ catchment area, and so the plans were shelved.

However, with Surrey expecting another bulge year in 2018 resulting from an increased birth rate and inward migration into the county, FHES’s expansion is back on the table.

There are no proposals to change the school’s admission criteria, only its PAN, and subject to gaining planning permission, the school hopes to have its new facilities in place ready for the 2018/19 academic year.

Mr Phillips continued: “This is absolutely a good thing for the school. It should ensure that we’ve got brilliant facilities for our students, and reassures parents that there will be enough places for their children.

“Of course we don’t know our numbers for next year yet, but certainly parents I’ve spoken to during open mornings and tours are really concerned that their children might not get into our school because of the bulge year.”

Mr Phillips added he intends to retain FHES’s average class size of 28 pupils after the expansion, and added the school has responded well to its ‘requires improvement’ rating by Ofsted in March.

He said: “It’s all going really well, we’re fully staffed, we’ve got fantastic teachers and have just done a staff satisfaction survey in which every single measure bar one improved dramatically. One of the comments I liked the most was ‘the school has soul’ which is lovely.”

Surrey County Council also funded a permanent expansion of another Farnham secondary school, Weydon, this year from a PAN of 252 to 308, as well as a 28-pupil bulge class for September 2016.

It comes after the county council revealed that applications for places at Surrey secondary schools next September have reached a new high, with 11,392 applications received by the October 31 closing date – 260 more than last year.

The number of applications has risen steadily in recent years, with 1,343 more applying this year than in 2012. The increase in applications in just four years adds up to enough pupils to fill a large new secondary school.

Linda Kemeny, Surrey’s cabinet member for schools, skills and educational achievement, said: “The sharp rise in demand for school places we’ve seen at primary level is translating into increased demand at the secondary stage as these application figures show.

“We know we need to find an extra 11,000 primary and secondary school places over the next five years but face a £35 million funding shortfall to meet this unprecedented demand at a time when our budgets are also under strain from rising numbers needing adult social care.”

The figures show that applications this year were up two per cent on last year’s 11,132 and up 13 per cent on the number received in 2012 – 10,049.