Great Denham Primary School is currently a two form entry primary school in the town of Bedford just an hour north of London. The school opened in September 2012 with just over 100 pupils, building to over 600 pupils. It serves a new and growing housing development just outside Bedford. The school has increased rapidly over the time it has been open and is currently undergoing building work to become a three form entry primary school. At Great Denham there are over 28 languages spoken and 40% of the pupils speak English as an additional language. 20% of the children are eligible for pupil premium funding.
‘Great Denham Primary School’s motto is ‘Inspiring excellence; everyone, everyday!’ This underpins the way learning is approached both for the pupils and the staff. We have six core values which are embedded in everything we do and we believe contributed towards our ‘outstanding’ grade for behaviour at our recent inspection in December 2017. We also achieved an outstanding grade at our recent inspection for Early Years.
Great Denham has a creative approach to its curriculum and the school works within the principles of REAL© Projects. Critique is a key feature of the school’s work. We believe passionately in immersive learning environments and creating flexible learning spaces for the pupils and have spent considerable time developing both the classroom learning environments as well as the breakout spaces around the school. Projects are developed using Essential Questions and Challenge Based Learning is also a key feature of the school’s work. We also believe passionately in the use of high quality text to support learning in each project. Over the six years the school has been open we have worked with EOS Education and now EdTransform to develop our projects as well as developing a close working relationship with Nicky Powell from Primary Matters.
The leadership team at Great Denham have also undertaken the EdTransform Quest bespoke leadership programme which saw the rapid development of our middle leaders over an academic year. We have spent a considerable amount of time investing in the development of leadership at all levels including the introduction of curriculum teams and key stage leaders.
We are extremely proud of what we have achieved as a school in the first six years since opening and we are looking forward to the next stage of our exciting journey.’