BOHUNT’S proposed sixth-form college has been given the go-ahead by East Hampshire District Council planners.

The three-storey classroom building providing 22 classrooms, a cafe and social area, learning resource centre, seminar rooms, prep room, offices, toilets and plant room, with a parking area and access road was approved on November 12.

Bohunt headteacher Neil Strowger said: "We are incredibly excited by this major step toward a Bohunt sixth form. Along with the initial permission to open from the regional schools commissioner, receiving planning is a major milestone.

“We will now be working with our appointed contractors to prepare the sixth form for opening."

Mr Strowger continued: “Bohunt’s sixth form will offer an outstanding educational experience that engenders and realises the highest aspirations of its students.

“It will offer students from all schools locally a genuinely different and significantly more convenient choice of further education that is focused on ensuring they achieve their potential whatever their background.

“They will now be able to continue with Mandarin beyond GCSE, work with leading employers on real life work challenges through our science, technology, engineering and maths programme, be able to learn languages in an immersion style, have access to an incredibly high quality outdoor programme and be taught in brand new, cutting edge facilities away from the main campus.

“And all of this will be local and in a highly supportive environment.”

Plans are to open Bohunt Sixth-Form College in September 2016 not just for its own students, but also for pupils from other schools in East Hampshire and over the border in South West Surrey and West Sussex.