A school will double the number of pupils as part of a drive to increase places across the borough to cope with new homes being built.

At the moment, Westcourt Primary and Nursery School in Silver Road, Gravesend, has 210 pupils on its role.

It is set to expand from this September, with the first extra reception class.

The school will continue to grow by one additional reception class each year over a seven year period – until all seven year groups have two classes instead of one.

It will mean there will be 420 children in the school by 2023.

Head teacher Kim Shubrook said: “We’ve all worked really hard over the last four and a half years to turn this school around.

“We got this school to be judged ‘good’ by Ofsted for the first time ever in 2013, 18 months after I started.

“We were approached by Kent County Council about expanding over the past two years. The first time I was having a hip replacement, so the timing was bad, but now we are in negotiations with them.

“We and KCC have come up with an expansion plan I’m happy with and obviously a lot of work needs to be done.

“We’re lucky here, we’ve got a lot of space we can utilize so the actual building work needed is not huge.”

The existing nursery is to be relocated into a different and larger room, and the new reception class will take over the old nursery space.

Two smaller storage rooms are to be knocked through to create another classroom and four new classrooms will be constructed within the community hall.

Those who use the community hall – the breakfast club and the public during elections – will instead use some unused space about two thirds of the size, elsewhere in the school.

Mrs Shubrook added: “We need to expand to carry on and survive, with all the academies coming up. We see this as a really positive thing for the school and for the community. Parents have been very supportive.”

The news comes after it was also announced this month that St John’s Catholic Primary School in Rochester Road, Gravesend, is set to take on 210 extra pupils as well, and The Leigh UTC in Dartford, which takes in children aged 14 and over, is planning to open a new facility on site for those aged 11-14. Effectively an entire second school on the same site, it is expected to be ready by 2017 and admit 120 students annually.