A KEIGHLEY primary school has opened up a newly-built facility on its grounds designed to boost its community engagement work.

The Holycroft Family Learning Hub will be used to host literacy and numeracy programmes, vocational learning sessions, pre-school courses for young mums and a range of recreational activities. The building, which is located in the school's playground and was finished in the summer holidays, has already been used to stage a series of coffee mornings.

This included a coffee morning last Thursday (Sept 25) to raise cash for the charity Macmillan Cancer Support.

The school, in Victoria Road, now wants all its parents to be aware of the hub, and to take advantage of its resources.

Holycroft's assistant head teacher Paul Kempster said: "The building is excellent. It's something that we've been wanting to have here for a long time.

"Many parents don't like coming into the school itself, possibly because they might be a bit nervous or maybe they have bad memories of their own school days.

"This building gives them an ideal opportunity to drop their children off and go inside a place where they can be with other parents, or can instead take part in programmes where they learn alongside their children."

The one-storey building includes a kitchen, a toilet, a central study and group learning area, a creche and an office.

The school applied for funding and planning permission to develop the facility, and the development work first began last year. Mr Kempster said the hub is currently in use, though it is due to be officially launched at an event on Tuesday October 7. The formal opening occasion will be attended by a district councillor and a former Holycroft Primary deputy head teacher.

Mr Kempster said: "We particularly want to use the hub to get our pupils' dads more involved. We also now have an increasing number of children from Slovakia at our school, and we're looking at ways of engaging with their families.

"We're just starting to get the hub up and running. At the moment it is hosting coffee mornings on Monday and Thursday mornings, and these have been well attended.

"From my own research into these kinds of hubs I've seen that it does take time to build up momentum, and for the parents to become fully involved.

"But we feel that our hub will be a success and it will be well used."