SCHOOL staff are celebrating after moving into their new £25m buildings - just weeks after the government scrapped the programme which funded the project.

Staff have moved into the new-look St John’s Catholic Comprehensive School in Gravesend, with the around 1,100 students set to follow in September.

Work on the school in Rochester Road began four years ago, with funding coming from the government’s Building Schools for the Future programme.

However, Gravesend Grammar School for Boys, Gravesend Grammar School for Girls and Meopham School have missed out on expected new premises, as the scheme was axed on July 5 - before work could begin.

St John’s headteacher John Stanley said: “We are very fortunate to have such a fantastic new building. The school has been designed around learning.

“We are a specialist arts school and the building has areas devoted to different types of arts. This includes a large impressive art gallery which faces North and has good natural light.”

School governor Peter Queree, who taught PE there from 1963 to his retirement in 1996, says he is excited about the next chapter in the school’s history.

He said: “The school was a very different place when I started. There were 200 children and nine members of staff and we were all in huts.

“I joined the PE department but at the time they didn’t even have a gym. The lower school was being built and the upper school was finished in the 1970s.”