An inner-city school hopes to use its major expansion plans to bring benefits to its poverty-hit community.

Horton Park Primary, on Bradford’s Canterbury estate, plans to start a job club in its new-build library so unemployed parents can go there to find work.

And it hopes to add two football pitches and a cycle route to its school field, which could be available for the wider community to use out of school hours.

The school already hosts CV-writing workshops, benefits and debt advice sessions and vocational lessons for parents, which teach marketable skills such as mehndi henna painting.

Much of this work has been funded by the EU’s Swan project, run locally by housing provider Incommunities.

The school’s community and learning manager, Naveed Mushtaque, said there were high levels of poverty and unemployment on the estate.

He said: “Although we have these difficulties, there’s real scope for optimism here. We are not going to feel sorry for ourselves. It’s who we are and it’s what makes us who we are.”

He said the school was in preliminary discussions with the Job Centre about starting a job club in school.

Horton Park Primary has now unveiled its £3 million extension, funded by Bradford Council, which includes the new library, a sports hall and six more classrooms.

This is just the third stage in an ambitious 10-stage expansion plan.

Over the next two years the school is expanding to have two classes in every year group, which will see the number of pupils increase from 250 to 400. Mr Mushtaque said: “We are moving into very, very exciting times, but the hard work begins here.”

Head teacher Sarah Dawson said they hoped to open the new library after school so parents could come in with their children to borrow books.

The Lord Mayor of Bradford, Councilor Dale Smith, toured the new extension yesterday.

He said he would be donating £300 from the Lord Mayor’s Charity Appeal towards buying new books for the library.