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Our View of Dean Close School
This super senior, set in 50 acres of grounds on the edge of the Cotswolds, is top in Gloucestershire for value-added. We also hear high praise for the pastoral care and the tutor system at this
all-through school – which reinforces the school’s view that education is as much about building character as it is knowledge.
Where is Dean Close School?
Just west of central Cheltenham, Dean Close is easily accessible. Most arrive by car although Cheltenham Spa rail station is just a few minutes away, and the school also offers a local bus service which it shares with a handful of other nearby schools.
As an interesting fact, the 50-acre site is the single biggest in Cheltenham – other landowners may hold more in total, but not on a single site. It’s a feature which translates into a very safe environment for all its pupils (particularly the youngest) and the holistically perfect juxtaposition of apparent freedom, but within the safety of a single perimeter boundary. For senior-school pupils, the expansive rural campus just a stone’s throw from the town centre is an enviable blend.
Headmaster
Bradley Salisbury is a massively likeable head. He’s evidently very experienced, but he retains a fatherly approachability and is both down to earth and honest. As well as the content of learning, he also has an eye for the learning environment itself and since arriving as head at Dean Close School, he has overseen a huge programme of refurbishment which has brought learning facilities and pupil environments up to the level of the already impressive co-curricular infrastructure.
New maths, economics and business classrooms have a distinctly university feel and spaces have been cleverly created to make them almost endlessly multifunctional and far more in keeping with current interactive and tech-based styles of teaching. Day-pupil houses, once scattered around the campus are now all clustered together around a central courtyard, making day pupils feel every bit as integral as the boarders.
It would be easy to make investments that would add a ‘wow factor’, he says, but he is adamant that large investments need to benefit the highest numbers of pupils. Mr Salisbury has grand plans for further refurbishment of the humanities block with a glass domed breakout space underneath and the planned science wing will be the jewel in the crown. But he is acutely aware of the impact of every detail on his pupils too – social spaces that offer the right balance of privacy and inclusion, for example.
‘Providing hurdles at the right height’ is the key to building resilience, says Mr Salisbury. ‘Children have to face disappointment and learn how to move past things that don’t go well,’ and he is certain that success isn’t just about grades (he makes the point that parents could achieve those more cheaply through tutoring), so a Dean Close education has to be far more valuable than that. Instead, he feels that he can best see success in 10 to fifteen years ‘when pupils are in jobs they love, they are leaders of some kind, they are active in their communities, responsible to the environment and they have stable relationships and friends they know how to care for.’
Admissions at Dean Close School
Dean Close isn’t overly selective and therefore prides itself on being great for families, as small class sizes and an excellent learning support department allow it to cater for learning styles as varied as children themselves. The school is more than aware of glitzier local competition, but this means that parents choose Dean Close for what it is and what it does.
Broadly speaking, the admissions process is a registration of interest followed by a request for reports from the child’s current school and age-appropriate assessments. There are regular
open mornings, but the school also welcomes individual visits. Plenty of pupils arrive from
Dean Close Prep School.
Academics and destinations
Pupils in Year 9 study English, maths, French, three sciences, history, geography, religious studies, Latin or classical civilisation and PSHE (there’s also the option to take Spanish as an additional language and classical Greek is up for grabs for the most able learners). Additionally, the ‘creative arts carousel’ introduces students at Dean Close School to a range of subjects incorporating drama, food and nutrition, music, PE, art and D&T - either just for fun or to ignite a passion for a subject they may wish to continue at GCSE.
Learning spaces are well designed and the oldest part of the original school has recently been refurbished into a very smart maths, business studies and economics area. Classrooms are high-ceilinged, bright and light with a variety of seating options from standard desks to tiered seating with cushions or sleek minimalist bar stools and high tables. It’s certainly a very different and more inspiring environment than many and most areas of a school.Class sizes are relatively small – we spotted a Year 9 RS lesson being taught by the headmaster with around 20 pupils, while the GCSE food and nutrition class in progress had just eight.
The library is a vast space, cleverly designed over two floors with the upstairs housing a computer suite and study area as well as a separate sixth-form work zone. Students can use it during study periods or just relax on the sofa with a magazine at breaktime.
The school tries hard to provide pupils with as many subject choices as they can so that everyone can be individual (there are currently 28 options at A-level). The timetable has recently been redesigned for sixth-formers, who can now choose from an enrichment block which runs alongside their A-level choices, allowing certain subjects (such as an
EPQ or a fantastic
Leiths cookery qualification) to be incorporated into the weekly timetable rather than having to be fitted into evenings and weekends.
Careers advice starts early: students are taught CV building, how to fill in job applications and there are workshops, talks and assemblies, as well as an entire ’Futures Day’. A pre-university '
beyond school' week teaches budgeting, cooking skills and encourages pupils to apply for days off to visit universities.
Results are solid, with 61 per cent getting grades 9-7 at GCSE last year and an impressive 79 per cent securing A*-B at A-level. Last year’s leavers hopped off to more than 40 different destinations from Cambridge to Oxford Brookes and Edinburgh to Cardiff.
Co-curricular
Facilities are top drawer – whether that’s the professional-standard Astro, the pristine 25-metre indoor pool or the Bacon Theatre with orchestra pit and box office.
Dean Close has an excellent sporting reputation. The main sports include rugby, hockey, netball, cricket and tennis, and pupils in Years 9 to 11 will all play for a school team. Participation in the sixth form is more optional, although most continue to enjoy sport to the same degree and there’s plenty to choose from with swimming, aerobics, badminton, water polo, fencing, judo, basketball, cycling and more to supplement the core disciplines.
The art block is huge and comes equipped with its own gallery space for exhibiting pupil's work. Sixth-form art students each have their own dedicated carousel area and there’s a lovely diversity of artistic output here with pupils we met busily finalising their outstanding portfolios.
The Helen Porter Music School centres around a voluminous concert hall with retractable seating. There are oodles of opportunities to perform, with lunchtime concerts and more choirs than you could shake a conductor’s baton at. A big, framed poster on one wall advertised ‘The House Shout’ (an inter-house singing competition, organised and choreographed by the pupils themselves) and depicted various groups of pupils having a whale of a time – ‘This is a school that loves to sing’ we were told, and it certainly looked like it.
The theatre is fabulous, with a spacious foyer and enough room to seat the whole school. Spectacularly professional productions have ranged from a racy
Cabaret to an astounding
Fiddler on the Roof (whose lead protagonist is now installed at the Paris Opera House).
Boarding at Dean Close School
Around 50 per cent of children board, and are looked after in one of six houses. There are two all-through boys houses with pupils from Years 9 to 13, and a third, much smaller house just for sixth-formers and then the same again for the girls. Offering a sixth-form only option alongside an all-through is an unusual set-up, but one which works well as it caters for all pupil agendas, whether they want a familial feel or a more university-style living space. Day pupils are part of houses too (now centrally located in the thick of it) and the house system is vital – not only for some friendly rivalry, but because it’s a central part of the pastoral care framework.
School community
Year 9,10 and 11 pupils have tutors with whom they meet regularly as a group of around eight. Sixth-formers identify three members of staff that they work well with and then they will be allocated to one of these as a tutor to see frequently, sometimes in groups but often one-to-one both formally and informally – ensuring that the tutor has a full understanding of the whole picture both academically and pastorally for every child.
Given the high day-pupil headcount, most parents are relatively local, have really bought into the Dean Close ethos and work hard to be part of it.
And finally....
There are five core values that run through the heart of all the
Dean Close Foundation schools – collaboration, compassion, critical thinking, communication and creativity – and, from what we saw, these do appear to be very deeply woven into life here. This underpins the ethos that a distinctly Dean Close education sets you up with skills for life and not just with a set of grades. This is a school that really does seem to have struck a brilliant balance between academic endeavour and the importance of extracurricular indulgence.