CALNE'S newest primary school is expanding so quickly that it already needs space for three new classes, less than a year after it opened its doors.

Fynamore County Primary School, which serves children from the new housing development in the north of the town, is continually adjusting to keep up with new families moving in.

This week it put in a planning application for three double mobile classrooms.

But the school's rapid growth has come as no surprise to head teacher Carolyn Maddox.

"The school is getting bigger and the area we serve gets bigger and we definitely need at least two extra classrooms," she said.

"It has always been proposed that Fynamore will eventually be a 14-classroom school, and this is just a phase of the expansions which have always been on the cards.

"It was all part of the original planning permission anyway."

The school currently has 159 pupils in seven classrooms.

"We had 84 last September and this time last year I thought we were only going to have 32," said Mrs Maddox.

She expects to have more than 180 in September.

And in a few years' time, when Fynamore has grown even more, there are plans for a permanent extension to be built on to the school.

"New houses are opening up every day, our class sizes are changing all the time, right across the school," Mrs Maddox said.

"But we planned very early for how we were going to manage the developments at the school.

"It's a challenge so it is exciting, and this is part of the reason I wanted to take this job here. It's very interesting."

Mrs Maddox said staff had reacted well to the transitions because of the detailed forward planning carried out by the governing body.

She said she put the growth of Calne in general down to the fact that many parents were able to afford a family home in Wiltshire, which they could not in London. This meant they were commuting from Calne to work in London every day

jbishop@newswilts.co.uk