A group of parents, teachers and other professionals received government approval for the proposal they submitted for a Steiner Academy in Bristol, following on from the success of similar schools in Hereford and Frome. In their application, submitted in January 2013, the Steiner group named the Chocolate Factory as their preferred location, principally because the BS5 postcode has the largest proportion of support from prospective parents within the city.
On 4th March 2014 they announced that the location is likely to be the St Matthias Campus in Fishponds. Commenting on their Facebook page, they said:
We would have loved to be in the Chocolate Factory in Greenbank, but it just wasn't practical - the site needs years of work and millions of pounds to make it usable, and in the current climate that level of resource isn't there to create new schools.
Believe it or not, St Matthias is the affordable option... And more central areas are extremely difficult for this kind of larger development. There is such a pressure on land in Bristol right now that projects like ours get forced out to the periphery.
It's worth noting that Fishponds is itself a relatively deprived area - some sections of it are in the bottom 10 in the UK in terms of deprivation. And our catchment is likely to include Eastville and Greenbank, some of which can access the site via the cycle path for sustainable travel.
News and updates are posted on the Steiner Academy website and there is discussion on the Steiner Academy facebook page and also in the comments section of relevant articles in the Bristol Evening Post.
Further Reading:
You can follow government announcements on free schools and their funding using the gov.uk announcements web page. (This gov.uk page also gives you an option of setting up a subscription, so that you receive direct email about the government announcements you are especially interested in.)
You may also be interested in the Department for Education FAQs on capital and premises for Free Schools opening in 2013 and beyond.
Tables of figures released by the government in March 2013 show that the first free school in Bristol (named the Bristol Free School) received £9.5 million from the government for acquisition and refurbishment of buildings. This school is now located on a site that was originally planned only to be a temporary one (a former Environment Agency and DEFRA site on Burghill Road, which is on the border between Southmead and Henbury).