Brunswick Community Primary: Sheffield school will be rebuilt top to bottom within three years under Government Rebuild scheme

A Sheffield primary school will be completely rebuilt within the next three years without moving the children off-site – or even losing their swimming pool.

Brunswick Community Primary, in Station Road, was originally constructed in the 1960s and has seen thousands of children pass through its doors. But, with its flat roof, maze-like corridors and ‘one big building’ design, the ‘Good’ rated school is starting to show its age.

Now, pupils can look forward to learning in ‘state of the art’ new classrooms and playgrounds as early as 2026.

The Woodhouse school has been earmarked for a government funding program to refurbish aging schools – which, for Brunswick, will mean the chance to reimagine their home from the ground up in a complete rebuild on the same site.

Headteacher Neil Frankland told The Star they hope to open the new grounds by June 2026 without disturbing the children’s learning or moving them elsewhere.

Mr Frankland said: “We’re over the moon. Opportunities like this don’t come often. It’s a massively exciting project for us, the children and the community that will mean a much more modern set of classrooms for our pupils.

"I don’t want to be too negative about our current building, but this is about having a more modern building for the children. It’s a single-storey building with a large flat roof, its windows and heating are inefficient, and it’s approaching the end of its life. All the partitions and corridors added inside have made it quite mazey too, although we’ve always enjoyed that as quirky.

"There are no formal plans yet, but a key feature at Brunswick is we have our own swimming pool and we have been told we will be supported to have that replaced at the new school. We will be staying on site until the new school is complete, then move to demolish the old buildings."

Although blueprints have not yet been drawn up or submitted to the city council’s planning process, Mr Frankland hopes to see construction begin within a year.

Six other schools in Sheffield – including Pipworth Primary, Lydgate Junior, Carfield Primary, Lowfield Primary, Ballifield Primary and Windmill Hill Primary – have also been greenlit for the scheme known as the ‘Rebuilding Schools Programme’. However, the DfE is yet to release any information about how much funding will be given to each school, including Brunswick.

It comes in the same week the National Audit Office published a report that up to 700,000 pupils across the country are attending schools that require major repairs or are even considerably unsafe, and that over a third of the nation’s school buildings are beyond their estimated design lifespan. The report ruled the Government “does not have enough information to know” how many schools are currently unsafe.

Speaking to reassure parents, Mr Frankland said: “This is not a matter that Brunswick School is unsafe. We were first contacted about this over a year ago, who said the cost of rebuilding the school was less than it would take to refurbish it, so this is what they’ve decided to do.”

Sheffield City Council has been contacted to ask if any schools in Sheffield are now considered unsafe following the report.