A Southend primary school could double in size to help meet a huge demand for places.

Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, off Southchurch Road, is set to get a £2.1million revamp, creating extra classrooms, a new hall, offices and entrance.

The council-funded work will see the school’s intake increase from 210 to 420 by 2020, with the school taking on an extra 60 pupils a year from 2015.

Headteacher Sally Nutman said: “We’re delighted to be able to offer this to the people and families of Southend.

“Expanding enables us to provide better quality of education for the whole of Southchurch.”

A major part of the proposals include joining the two halves of the school by building a link and a central area between the two.

Teaching staff will increase from 15 to 44.

Southend Council is set to decide whether to give the plans the go-ahead at next Wednesday’s development control committee meeting.

Council officers have recommended the plans are approved.

The authority is putting Government cash into the expansion which includes the cost of the council having to buy six terraced houses on Windmere Road, where the new entrance to the school will be.

Sacred Heart School’s admissions policy gives priority to children from Catholic families.

Children from other Christian families are also considered above those children who belong to other religions or who have no religious background.

Last November, Southend Council rubber-stamped plans to expand Thorpe Greenways infant and junior schools, Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Hamstel infant and junior schools and Darlinghurst Primary School to fill the extra 136 places it will need by 2016.

The expansion plans come due to a baby boom, with the number of births across Southend increasing from 1,996 in 2005/6 to 2,195 in 2012/13.