A three year multi million pound upgrade to Upton Court Grammar School reached its climax on Tuesday when the new sports centre was opened.

The school in Lascelles Road, Slough has already acquired a new three storey teaching block with specialist laboratories and classrooms following a grant from the Education and Skill Funding Agency (ESFA) in 2015. Now it has its new sports centre.

The opening ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Slough Cllr Avtar Kaur Cheema, school governors, trustees, staff and headteachers from other schools in the town.

Students from the school’s Sports Council hosted the event and former principal of the school Mercedes Hernández Estrada, flew from Madrid to attend the event.

She teamed up with Edward Neighbour, co-chief executive of Pioneer Educational Trust which runs the school to cut the ribbon and declare the sports centre officially open. Mr Neighbour thanked the EFSA for the grant, along with the building company, B & K Building Services, for their hard work and dedication in building the new additions to the school.

The investment and upgrading of Upton Court Grammar School’s facilities comes at the same time as outstanding academic success. Its GCSE outcomes ranked it as the top school in Slough for progress and it remains in the highest achieving one per cent of all schools in England.

Mark Pritchard, the school’s headteacher, said “The multi-million-pound expansion and improvement programme, which concludes with the opening of our new sports centre, mean we now have world-class facilities to match our world-class curriculum. We are very proud that we are able to give our students the very best educational experience possible in first-class educational surroundings.”