Market Field School is taking shape

Wearing his personalised West Ham hard hat and hi-vis vest (with the message Moore Than Just a Football Club), he walks from classroom to classroom with a sense of wonderment.

To anyone else, this is an impressive, but functional building.

To Gary, it is so much more.

It is the culmination of more than a decade of negotiation, lobbying and shameless pleading for a new school building.

In that time, he has attended umpteen meetings, prepared endless reports and, in desperation, lobbied heads of states, billionaires and even the Queen to try to get funding for a new school.

Now, thanks to nearly £10million of funding from Essex County Council, work is close to completion on the new school.

Market Field School in Elmstead Market opened in 1976 to educate 60 children with moderate learning difficulties.

But its reputation spread and demand for places grew.

To accommodate the ever-rising school roll, portable buildings were put in the playground.

Eventually there were ten and the playground was nicknamed Shed City.

As the years past and talks for a new school continued, the temporary buildings began to age and leak.

Every spare corner of the school was taken for teaching space – the school hall had to double as a dining area and more than 100 staff crammed into one small staff room...which didn’t even have a window.

So to Gary, the new two-storey building, with capacity for 200 children, is the stuff dreams are made of.

He still can’t quite take it in, saying: “It still doesn’t seem real but it is exhilarating.

“To go from nothing to what there is now is just phenomenal.”

But the project is about more than just bricks and mortar.

Gary said: “As a school, we work on self worth and this will accelerate that.

“We have a new school, which means people believe in us, people believe we can succeed.

“It is a physical message to go with the mental and emotional one we provide. It is the same for the staff. It is recognition of the value of their work.

“I work with the most fantastic kids there are, it’s like living a dream. They deserve the best start in life.”

The school moved out of its Elmstead Market home at the end of last summer and Gary, and others, spent the summer holidays unpacking furniture and belongings in the temporary base at the former Alderman Blaxill School in Colchester.

Now packing has begun again as the new school will be ready for use at the beginning of the new school year in September.

It is already oversubscribed as it will have 215 students on the first day of term.

Gary is not worried.

“It is different this time,” he said. “There won’t be any temporary buildings. We can use specialist rooms as teaching bases.”

The children have been involved throughout with regular visits to the school.

Autistic children can struggle with change, so tomove locations has been a real challenge for them.

Gary said: “We tell them we are one family and it is just like moving house.”

As he soaks in the potential of the new school hall with its lofty ceilings, his excitement is tangible.

The project has come a long way from the dark days of constant rejection.

“It has been a struggle,” he said, “but I never once felt it could not be done. I never wanted to give up. I knew it was the right thing to do and right is might.”