It may end up being ten years late
The Oasis Temple Quarter site between Silverthorne Lane and the Feeder canal in St Phillips, in an image taken in September 2024. The site has since been cleared ready for work to build the school to begin (Image: Google Earth)
A new secondary school for inner city Bristol will be built, and the headteacher is ‘hopeful’ building work will start in the next few weeks. However, the day when the first pupils walk through its doors looks certain to be delayed yet again.
The headteacher of Oasis Temple Quarter has said he ‘understands and shares the frustration’ of parents whose children may well have left school by the time it opens.
No work has yet begun on the site of Oasis Temple Quarter, which is planned to be built between Silverthorne Lane and the Feeder Canal in St Phillips. Next door, a huge new complex of student flats has risen above the St Phillips Causeway flyover in the past few months, with students there scheduled to move in for the start of the 2026 academic year – when the University of Bristol ’s new Temple Quarter campus is due to open.
But issues with the banks of the canal and the site as a whole have held back the start of work on the new secondary school and it faces being delayed yet again. So much that the ‘demographic bulge’ in student numbers, that sparked a huge campaign to get a new school for inner city East Bristol back in the 2010s and early 2020s, will have passed and there is speculation the school won’t ever be built.
Richard James, the headteacher at Oasis Academy Temple Quarter, said the academy trust chain is ‘working closely’ with the Department of Education and this week he confirmed to Bristol Live that the school will go ahead.
The school opened in 2023 for Year 7 pupils on a temporary shared school site in South Bristol before moving after a term to a second temporary site at Spring Street in Bedminster, where it has been now for the past year and a half. That has been steadily expanding as the next year joined in Year 7, but the lack of action over in St Phillips means the school will stay south of the river for the foreseeable future.
Chief Executive Officer, Oasis Community Learning, John Barneby, right, with head of Oasis Academy Temple Quarter, Richard James, left, pictured in January 2024(Image: Oasis Academy Temple Quarter)
“We understand and share the frustration felt by many of our community regarding delays to the development of our permanent school site,” said Mr James. “Oasis Academy Temple Quarter remains fully committed to providing a safe and high-quality learning environment for our students at our Spring Street site.
“We continue to work closely with the Department for Education and can confirm that the Silverthorne Lane site will go ahead. While we are unable to share all details at this time, we are hopeful that building work will commence in the next few weeks and will continue to keep our parent community updated as much as possible.
“We are grateful for the ongoing support and patience of our families and remain focused on delivering the best possible education for our students,” he added.
The saga of Oasis Temple Quarter
Parents in East Bristol campaigned for years for a new secondary school. In the 2010s, the fight to get a child into one of the over-subscribed local secondary schools around Easton, Barton Hill, Lawrence Hill, Redfield and St Phillips was tough, and there was a huge shortage of secondary school places.
It took years for first the council, then the Government, to back the idea. It was originally supposed to open in 2018, but wasn’t given planning permission by the council until 2020. It wasn’t until April 2022 that ministers finally allocated funding for a new school as part of the wider Temple Quarter regeneration project – some ten years after the campaign first started.
Children from Redfield Educate Together show their support for a proposed new school – pictured in 2020
Even then, the delays continued. After it was awarded planning permission in 2020, the original date to open it was put at 2024 or 2025, and so Oasis decided to open up the school anyway in September 2023, at a disused council-owned industrial estate site at Spring Street in Bedminster. Even that was delayed, after bats were discovered there, so the school opened on a temporary site within another Oasis school further into South Bristol for a few months until the start of 2024.
In October last year, Oasis was given planning permission to expand the temporary Bedminster site, citing delays to the start of work in St Phillips. Then, the opening date for the new Silverthorne Lane site was put back from a predicted opening date, when the Government finally granted funding, of 2026 to September 2027, when the first pupils who joined in 2023 will be entering Year 11.
Over at Silverthorne Lane, the site was eventually cleared of its industrial buildings, but there was a problem – the banks of the Feeder Canal weren’t sound, so the start was delayed while that was fixed. The failure to start work on site on the north bank of the Feeder since then means the move across to a new permanent school is likely to be delayed again. If the new school doesn’t open until 2028, it is likely its original pupils will have to stay on to the sixth form to be able to go there.
Will the new school actually be needed?
The population bulge of the late 2010s and early 2020s prompted work to start on three new secondary schools. Trinity has already opened in Lockleaze, but both Oasis Temple Quarter and the other – another Oasis school in Knowle West – have been delayed so long that the population bulge has now peaked.
When Oasis Temple Quarter opened its doors on a temporary site in September 2023, its first Year 7 intake was supposed to be six full classes of 180 pupils, but only 71 joined. However, this same cohort, now in year 8, currently sits at 123 students as more children have joined since, with more on a waiting list. Last September, the academy accepted 150 students and currently have 155 on roll, and a waiting list. Oasis Temple Quarter has also confirmed that they are oversubscribed for September 2025 and have hosted admission appeals with Bristol City Council.. Last September, with the school now firmly based in Bedminster, the Year 7 intake rose to 125..
The Oasis Academy Temple Quarter’s temporary site at Spring Street in Bedminster(Image: Oasis Academy Temple Quarter)
This September, with the physical constraints of the temporary Spring Street site, the school decided to reduce its new Year 7 capacity – known as the Pupil Admission Number or PAN – from a theoretical 180, if it was in its new building, to 120.
That asks questions of the grand plans for the site in St Phillips, where the school that will eventually be built is supposed to have a capacity of 1,600 pupils. In the long term, however, the hope is that at least some of the 10,000 or so new homes planned to be built in St Phillips as part of the huge Temple Quarter regeneration project won’t be student flats or smaller build-to-rent flats, and instead be family homes which will boost the numbers of secondary school-age pupils.
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Across the city, Bristol City Council has gone from predicting a big shortage of school places in its last strategy review in the late 2010s to now predicting there will be as many as 750 surplus Year 7 secondary school places by the year 2030, the equivalent of 25 Year 7 classes, or two or three schools.
In its new strategy, the council said there are no plans at the moment to look to close secondary schools or cut capacity, but the next strategy period will review that.
Inside the new Oasis Academy Temple Quarter’s temporary site at Spring Street in Bedminster. The school opened in Brislington in September, and moved to Bedminster in January 2024.(Image: Oasis Academy Temple Quarter)
“Bristol’s 2015 – 2018 Integrated Education and Capital Strategy predicted a peak in Year 7 school applications in 2023. To address these pressures, the strategy outlined plans to build three new secondary schools in Bristol to manage student numbers as they moved through primary into secondary provision,” the new strategy document states.
“Two of these projects have faced delays creating significant shortages in Year 7 school places for September 2022. Oasis Daventry Road and Oasis Temple Quarter opened in temporary accommodation from September 2023, which has helped ease pressure for secondary school places,” it added.
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The peak in numbers of pupils in Bristol going from primary to secondary in Year 7 peaked last September, when 4,635 children made the big step up. Already, numbers of primary school age children are falling so markedly that for the past two Septembers, there have been almost 1,000 empty chairs supposed to be for four-year-olds in Reception classes across Bristol.
As those under-capacity year groups move up from primary to secondary in the coming years, the council will soon have to wrestle with surplus places in secondary schools.
Inside the new Oasis Academy Temple Quarter’s temporary site at Spring Street in Bedminster. The school opened in Brislington in September, and has moved to Bedminster in January 2024.(Image: Oasis Academy Temple Quarter)
“The forecast shows a possible surplus of 322 places in east and central Bristol by 2030 as demand reduces,” the council strategy states. “This is the equivalent of up to six forms of entry. The Local Authority would foresee the requirement of any overallocations above pupil admission numbers to have passed.
“The Local Authority is not recommending any reductions in PAN currently. This will be reviewed in the next strategy update when demand will have fallen, and parental preference will be taken into account,” the council strategy document states.
“The impact of the delay in completion of the permanent site for the new Oasis Temple Quarter school and long-term capacity implications will also be considered when planning for this area,” it added.