A New Beginning at Eaton Bray Lower School

Posted on May 4, 2011

Eaton Bray Lower School is no more – but all is not what it seems, so please read on!

The heading suggests, particularly at this time of year, new life and a fresh start, and that is exactly what is happening in Eaton Bray. Your local School became an Academy on Friday 1st April 2011.

To explain the reasons for this, I would like to take you back to the nineties. Eaton Bray School seemed constantly under threat at this time. We did not have high numbers, and in fact at times only three classrooms were in use, the fourth being ‘moth balled’ as they called it. We were regularly told that village schools were not necessary and that unless numbers increased the School would be closed. We were then given some freedom with Local Management of Schools and the creation of strong Governing Bodies. For us, this was the beginning of a new era. We were fortunate to have dedicated, committed School governors who worked with the School, and gradually we grew and developed. Our numbers increased, we designed and added a purpose built Pre School, which became part of the School, our School grounds were developed, and this year we extended the library and built a new classroom. Most importantly, we have a fantastic staff team and some of us openly admit to loving our jobs and looking forward to another Monday morning! This rubs off on our children and here are some of their quotes reported on their School census!

Tilly, “All the teachers are kind and caring”,
Sulaymaan “It’s a good place to be, the teachers try to make learning fun”.
Finlay “The best thing about EBLS is that there are lots of kind generous people”
Finally, Peter provides a list!
“The children are nice, we have fun, we learn lots of facts and the rules are fair”

As I hope you are beginning to realise, we feel Eaton Bray School is a special place and we wanted to keep it that way. With fears of cuts and changes, and so many unknowns, we felt the way forward was to become an Academy. [This was made possible because of our ‘Outstanding’ status achieved at the last OFSTED inspection].

Accordingly, the Governing Body and the whole of the School staff voted unanimously to apply for Academy status, and this was accepted by Government, and came into effect on April 1st. So, we have a new beginning, which fits well with the history of Eaton Bray as it is the 150th anniversary of Eaton Bray School this year.

I would like to thank everyone who has made this possible, and hope that staff, parents and most of all, the children will continue to enjoy Eaton Bray School. We are here to stay!

Sue Hounslow, Head

Source: Focus, May 2011