A TENBURY school is boosting the town's environmental credentials with a brand-new solar powered building for students.

Tenbury High Ormiston Academy (THOA) will be opening the innovative building later this month.  

Using advanced technologies including solar photovoltaic cladding (PV) and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, the new building will reduce the school’s reliance on fossil fuels and create a more energy-efficient building.

The classroom’s innovative SolarSpace build features a rain-screen solar cladding system in addition to rooftop solar PV. As a result, the new site will produce more energy than it consumes, creating an additional 32,000 kWh every year that can be utilised elsewhere across the school.

This results in a reduction of nearly 7,000 kg of CO2 emissions every year, helping the school to reduce its energy bills.

It will also help more young people from the academy to access a creative arts curriculum, providing extra drama and music classrooms, alongside a practice room for the students to use.

The project has been completed in partnership with construction firm Energy Positive Assets Limited who work to advance the cause of Net Zero by reducing the environmental impact of new buildings.

Vicki Dean, principal at THOA, said: “This new space is a great investment for our school and its future, both in creating additional classrooms for our students to learn in and helping us to produce abundant and clean renewable power.

“Honouring our environmental responsibilities is so important to us all at Tenbury High and we’re so excited to open this new building as a key step on our journey to reaching net zero.”

It comes on the back of THOA introducing a 'reset room' which is a supervised space where disruptive pupils can be sent during lessons to reflect, engage in silent work and, where appropriate, talk about what went wrong and how their removal could have been avoided.

It is hoped that the measure will have a positive effect on all pupils in the school in the school, with teachers able to teach and pupils able to learn free from persistent disruption.