Govt plans temporary site and extension to meet St Martin’s School demand

The Gibraltar Government is using a temporary site for additional classrooms for St Martin’s School, while working on plans for permanent extension to meet increased demand.

This comes after years of increased demand for the school which saw the building at capacity just a year after it was opened.

By September 2022, St Martin’s School was at capacity due to unprecedented growth in class sizes over several years.

At the time, the Department of Education said this had broken established patterns used to forecast demand due to the sharp increase in the number of young children needing specialised care.

After years of small cohorts of around six new pupils annually, demand for St Martin’s School tripled in 2021.

This year the Government has used spare rooms in Governor’s Meadow as classrooms for St Martin’s School pupils.

The Minister for Education, Dr John Cortes, explained that these spare classrooms are down the corridor from St Martin’s School but come under the footprint of Governor’s Meadow.

“It’s the same building so there’s no inconvenience to St Martin’s children,” Dr Cortes said.

He added the Department of Education is developing an interim arrangement so that any additional classes needed next academic year will also be catered for.

This means in September 2025 the additional classes will be in another site for this interim period before an extension is built for the school.

“We’re working on that and we would use another site to house the additional classes,” Dr Cortes said.

Dr Cortes said the details cannot yet be shared due to these arrangements still being developed.

He confirmed that by September 2026 it is expected a permanent extension would be completed and by then all classes should be back in St Martin’s School.

“We are planning an extension to [St Martin’s] School, which again I don’t want to give the details yet, but we will be announcing them shortly, which means that the school on site will have between eight and 10 additional classrooms,” Dr Cortes said.