Great Barr £30 million Q3 Academy opens its doors to students
Apr 26 2010 by Kat Keogh, Birmingham Mail
MORE than 1,100 Birmingham pupils will cross the threshold of a new £30 million school campus today.
The Q3 Academy, in Great Barr, boasts state-of-the-art facilities including a 300-seat theatre, plus innovative design and technology departments.
Construction work at the former Dartmouth High School began two years ago and has seen the facility’s internal area quadruple in size to 11,000 square metres.
Old portable classrooms and crumbling buildings have been replaced with design features including a showpiece glass-domed ceiling.
The Wilderness Lane campus was officially opened by former CBI Director-General and Trade Minister Lord Digby Jones of Birmingham at a special ceremony.
The Midland peer delivered a keynote speech to local business leaders at a business breakfast attended by those involved in the five-year project.
School chief executive and principal Caroline Badyal said: “Q3 is about raising aspiration and ensuring that every young person who leaves the Academy is appropriately skilled and indeed able to enjoy a happy and successful life.
“I am therefore delighted that Lord Digby Jones continues to be a friend and supporter of Q3 Academy.”
Work has been carried out by HBG Construction, which built a number of colleges in the area including Birmingham’s Matthew Boulton and Joseph Chamberlain.
The new 32-acre site will accommodate 900 pupils aged 11 to 16 and a further 250 students in the sixth form.
It is sponsored by West Bromwich-born millionaires Eric and Grace Payne and specialises in design and enterprise.
Students are grouped into five “companies” depending on the subjects they are studying: communications, arts, discovery, which includes maths and science, lifestyle, and social design, which incorporates subjects like geography and RE.
School uniforms were scrapped in favour business suits when the academy was launched in 2008.
