THE scale of the damage caused by a major fire at a Southend school has been revealed.

Firefighters battled the blaze at Cecil Jones Academy, in Eastern Avenue, for nearly eight hours after it broke out at about 4.30pm on Tuesday.

After problems with the water supply, crews had to use a nearby swimming pool to help douse the flames.

At least 15 classrooms and the school library have been ruined by the blaze, as this footage from this morning shows.

The aftermath at Cecil Jones Academy (Video: Al Underwood)

Bev Williams, the executive principal of the academy, is simply glad no one was injured in the fire and believes the school will be up and running with no effect on the pupil’s education for the new school year.

She said: “I had a phone call at 4.30pm and went straight over to Cecil. I felt relieved that there was nobody hurt, which was the key thing.

“All the evacuation procedures worked extremely well. There were some staff just leaving the building when it happened and obviously the site staff, but no children.

Echo:

“We will be open for the children tomorrow morning for their results and we see no reason why we won’t be open fully in September- we are going to make it happen.

“There are 18 classrooms out of circulation so we are going to look to get porta cabins because we don’t want them to lose out on their education, 15 of them are affected very badly and totally gone, three of them have smoke damage. There are 18 classrooms in total and 1,000 children.

“The area affected is the maths area, health and social and two science clubs.

“The library has totally gone. That area of the building was built in 2003 and isn’t the oldest part of the building.”