A DOVER school is to be demolished and rebuilt during the coming year while the pupils are taught in a “mobile village”, probably on another school site.

Kent County Council has revealed that all the buildings at Shatterlocks Infants School at Heathfield Avenue are to be demolished. They contain asbestos and any attempt to modify them could cause a health hazard.

A county council spokeswoman stressed there was no danger to the children at the school while the buildings remained intact.

“It is quite safe for the children to be in there now,” she said.

Work will start in July, at the end of the summer term, and it is hoped the new complex will be ready to open at the start of the autumn term in September 2004.

The project is expected to cost £1.9 million, and the money will come from the modernisation programme fund, totalling £81 million, which the Government has made available.

Dover-based Hartwell Architects have designed the new buildings. It is planned that instead of being on two tiers, the land will be levelled and the new school, which will be built of traditional brick and tile, will be on one level.

Among the new facilities will be three separate playing areas, and parking for 18 cars.

Thousands of children, aged four to seven, have been educated at Shatterlocks since it was opened in the early 1950s.

The present pupils and staff will be moved to a series of mobile classrooms and offices for the coming year.

The county council spokeswoman said the preferred site for the mobiles was the nearby Barton Junior School in Barton Road, but a final decision had not yet been made.