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Bedales School, Petersfield

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Bedales School details

Address:

Bedales School
Steep, Petersfield, Hampshire GU32 2DG

Telephone:

01730 711 569

Fax:

01730 300 500

Email:

admissions@bedales.org.uk

Website:

www.bedales.org.uk

Authority:

Hampshire

Gender of entry:

Mixed

Age range:

-

Number of students:

416

Affiliation:

HMC

Gender of sixth form:

Mixed

General information

Headteacher: Keith Budge, appointed in 2001.

Background: Bedales School, located in the heart of the Hampshire countryside overlooking the Rother valley, offers its pupils a very distinctive all-round education. Founded in 1893 by educationalist John Badley, Bedales set out to be innovative and broader in its curriculum and approach than the traditional public schools of its day and remains so today. Keen to uphold its founding principles, in September Bedales introduced a new curriculum for 14 to 16-year-olds to better suit its students and mirror its ethos. Under the new system pupils combine five to seven GCSEs with other courses, many of which will be Bedales Assessed Courses (BACs), and include outdoor work, product design and dance. Pupils follow a traditional AS/A-level programme in the sixth form. The vast majority go on to university with a significant number gaining Oxbridge places each year. The school prides itself on being unconventional. Staff and pupils call each other by their first names and it has no formal uniform. It is, though, the outdoor work scheme through which staff and students manage about half of the school estate that is most unusual. Pupils are involved in tree planting, gardening, livestock husbandry and organic farming. A thriving cottage industry has developed which allows students to also learn bread making, blacksmithing, spinning and weaving.Sport is also an essential part of a Bedales education which is compulsory for all except those in their final year. High levels of success are achieved in team sports.

Alumni: Daniel Day-Lewis, Minnie Driver, actors; Viscount Linley, businessman.

Higher education: 97% (6 Oxford 2 Cambridge).

Special needs: There is a learning support department with three staff. Pupils with special educational needs are offered a 35-minute one-to-one lesson a week. The school can cope with pupils with mild forms of conditions such as Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, autism, epilepsy, speech and language disorders but the decision to admit pupils depends on the numbers of pupils with those conditions already in the school and the support required.

Inspection: 2002: This is a very good school with many strengths and very few weaknesses, in which standards of attainment in relation to pupils' capabilities are high and progress rapid across all subjects and abilities, and in which the public exam results are significantly better than those of maintained selective schools, and in line with those similar wide-entry independent schools. The governors, headmaster and senior management work well together and provide positive leadership for the school. All staff are hard-working and committed to the education, care and welfare of the pupils. The school has good levels of pastoral care, and relationships among pupils and between staff and pupils are of a very high order. The school provides an environment in which the unconventional is valued, individuality is truly recognised and a diversity of interests encouraged.

Feeder schools: Dunhurst; Windlesham House; Westbourne House; Twyford; Amesbury.

Percentage admitted according to academic ability: 85.

Average class size (seniors; 11-16): 22.

Average class size (sixth form): 12.

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