Mission Statement

Aims and Ethos

Description & History:

· Old Buckenham Hall is a co-educational, boarding and day school for children aged from 3 to 13 years of age.

· The school is situated in an 80 acre estate in the heart of the Suffolk countryside some 20 minutes South-East of the medieval market town of Bury St Edmunds.

· OBH, as the school has become known, was founded in 1862 in Lowestoft, Suffolk, by the Misses Ellen and Margaret Ringer, as a ‘Dame School’ called South Lodge School.

· The school moved to its current position in Brettenham Park in 1956.

Aims:

· To provide a safe, happy & nurturing environment for children.

· To promote the idea of health and well-being as being fundamental to children’s development.

· To ensure that all our teaching and learning processes and outcomes support the needs of all our pupils.

· To provide the highest possible quality of pastoral care for all pupils at OBH by ensuring that all pupils feel valued, supported and listened to.

· To provide an academic framework within which scholarship and creativity can happily and successfully coexist.

· To provide a broad range of learning experiences and opportunities both in and out of the classroom.

· To promote and encourage strong Christian family values of respect, tolerance, good manners and service.

· To develop and maintain strong links with the local community.

· To promote strong and positive relationships between pupils and teachers based on mutual trust and respect.

· To build a reputation as a sector leading boarding school with an approach to prep school boarding that caters for the needs of modern families as well as those with a more traditional view of boarding.

· To provide an academic, sporting, creative and cultural framework within which pupils can become the best versions of themselves that they can possibly be. (See Curriculum Policy).

· To promote a culture of striving for excellence in all that we do.

· To fully prepare children for the next stage in their education and to ensure that we help match each child to the most appropriate senior school.

Ethos

Old Buckenham Hall is a happy, vibrant community made up of children and staff who either come to school on a daily basis or who live on site as boarders. The Headmaster and Mrs Brett, together with their family of 2 boys, a dog and a cat, live in the school and promote a happy family atmosphere. They are supported by a strong team of teachers and support staff many of whom also live on the school campus giving the school a friendly ‘village’ feel.

Much emphasis is placed on making sure that all visitors to the school receive a very warm welcome, whether they are parents, friends, governors, prospective parents or visitors.

The Governing Body are very ‘hands on’ at OBH and support the work of the school and the headmaster in many different ways both formally and informally. The school’s Pastoral, Education, Bursary and F&GP Committees are an important part of this process.

The school works hard at maintaining excellent and effective channels of communication with all parents in the school. This is done through a weekly electronic newsletter, regular parents meetings, coffee mornings and drinks evenings for groups of parents, the ‘Friends of OBH’ committee (made up of a representative from each year group in the school), an effective Form Tutor system as well as a general ‘open door’ policy for parents.

The school motto is Spero – I Hope.

The school has its own full-time Chaplain who is responsible with the Headmaster for overseeing the spiritual life of the school. This is done partly through assemblies and a weekly Sunday Church service in the local village Church and partly through working with the pupils themselves. Christian principles pervade the life of the school at every opportunity. Whilst being a Church of England school, OBH welcomes children of other faiths.

Much importance is placed on the boarding structure to ensure that all pupils enjoy being at school. As well as the Headmaster and Mrs Brett there is a boys’ housemaster and a girls’ housemistress. They are supported by a team of matrons and a school nurse as well as other members of the teaching staff who do regular evening and weekend duties.

Food and Nutrition (see our Food & Nutrition policy) are very important as part of maintaining a happy atmosphere at school. Much emphasis is placed on ensuring that the food is of a very high standard and that there is plenty of it!

The school operates a Pupil Council which meets twice each term with the Headmaster. Each class in the school elects a representative to serve on the Council for one term at a time. Any pupil can ask for an issue to be raised at Council, minutes of which are posted for all pupils to see.

There is a strong culture of self-evaluation at OBH. Members of staff (teaching and non-teaching staff) are regularly involved in working parties evaluating areas of school life. Recommendations from these working parties will then become part of the school’s self-improvement plan, which is an on-going process.

All staff at OBH are encouraged to undertake a programme of CPD which is monitored through an annual PR&D meeting with the Headmaster.