We are delighted to announce that our Junior Girls School will be moving from their current location on College Avenue, to the Junior Boys School site from September 2023.
Our aim for Claires Court has always been to ensure parity of education, opportunity and equality through the breadth of the curriculum and our teaching practice. Last year, we promoted Mrs Kirby from Head of Junior Girls to be the Head of Juniors (Boys, Girls and Nursery) to oversee this in the primary phase. Alongside her senior team, the past year has been a successful example of developing the junior curriculum including forest school opportunities, increasing the joint sporting fixtures played and offering joint educational off-site visits.
James Wilding, Academic Principal said,
"This is an exciting move for our Juniors as one of our strategic objectives, when applying to relocate our school to one site, was to educate the juniors together.
Under the leadership of Mrs Kirby, our junior curriculum is united, so we can progress to accommodate both boys and girls to be educated in the same physical space.
We have successfully managed both junior boys and girls on one site in the past two years as during the pandemic, they were successfully taught together at the Junior Boys School."
The Nursery, Senior Girls and the Sixth Form will remain at College Avenue and Senior Boys at Ray Mill Road East by the river. The current space used by Junior Girls will be allocated to the growing needs of our Senior Girls and Sixth Form. All our school sites will continue to benefit from future investment and improvements such as the recent refurbishment of the Jubilee Teaching Wing at Senior Boys, and installation of a brand new pastoral and medical hub at Senior Girls.
The diamond structure will remain, and we will continue to teach all the current Junior children in a single sex capacity until they leave the school in Year 6. Our new reception classes in September 2023 will start as coeducational meaning that going forwards, we aim to be fully coed by 2029. This move does not affect Senior Boys and Senior Girls, and they will remain gender separated and there are no plans to alter this, or the arrangements for the coed Nursery and Sixth Form.
Mr Hugh Wilding, Administrative Principal concluded,
"Our previous plans to move all schools to one campus will be fresh in recent memory. I’d like to take this opportunity to confirm that this move is not related to that, and we accept the decision of the planning team for that application."
This is a strategic decision to join the two junior schools together on a site that has the capacity to do so and will benefit the children, whilst continuing to invest in the other parts of our estate.
"As a school, we are fortunate to have the agility to respond to market conditions and an expressed wish for a coed environment at this level; only last year our Nursery School provision was enhanced in response to parents' wishes to allow 2-year-olds within our setting. We believe that this is a really positive move for both the children and the school and are excited for the future."
