Bedales Senior School

Bedales was founded by John Haden Badley in 1893 to be a humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes typical of late-Victorian public schools.

The school became fully co-educational in 1898; students were given a formal voice by 1916, when the School Council was formed. Located in 120 acres of farmland, woods, orchards and playing fields, students still follow John Badley’s ideal of educating ‘head, hand and heart’.

Bedales was founded to be different from the schools of its time.

Where others imposed conformity, Bedales nurtured individuality, initiative and an enquiring mind.

True to its roots and founding principles the school places emphasis on collaboration and care for others. Our students are naturally ambitious and competitive, and build strong relationships with each other and their teachers based on mutual respect; everyone, staff and students, is on first name terms. This approach enables students to concentrate on the complex business of learning, developing and becoming their own person.

Bedales continues to be an innovative school; we led the country in replacing many GCSEs with our own more interesting and more demanding Bedales Assessed Courses. Our students move on comfortably to university and beyond because they are self-disciplined, are already used to organising their own time, to studying in depth and to mixing and debating with their elders.

Our students are naturally ambitious and competitive, and build strong relationships with each other and their teachers based on mutual respect; everyone, staff and students, is on first name terms. This approach enables students to concentrate on the complex business of learning, developing and becoming their own person.

A glance at our online calendar of events gives a sense of the breadth and depth of the opportunities at Bedales. Here we encourage students to develop their interests and passions across a wide range of subjects and activities.

Our ethos
The vision of Bedales founder John Badley was to create a school which would be profoundly different from the public schools of his day. From 1893, when Bedales began, there was a determination to shape the school around what was considered best for the individual child’s educational welfare and happiness.

Two strands predominated: breadth (“head, hand and heart”) and the cultivation of the individual’s intellectual and personal qualities (“intelligence, initiative and individuality”).

Many of Badley’s early innovations are now mainstream: co-educational boarding (at Bedales since 1898); the emphasis put on the arts, sciences and voluntary service; the importance of pastoral care; and listening to students’ views (the Bedales School Council, established in 1916, was one of the first school councils).

Even so, the contrast between Bedales and other schools remains strong. We believe that our informality engenders a genuine sense of partnership between teacher and student – a shared excitement about ideas and educational discovery. Educational innovation continues today, with our Bedales Assessed Courses, project-based learning and the later start to the school day.

Our aims
The five aims of Bedales Schools are:

• To develop inquisitive thinkers with a love of learning who cherish independent thought.
• To enable students' talents to develop through doing and making.
• To foster individuality and encourage initiative, creativity and the appreciation of the beautiful.
• To enable students, former students, parents and staff to take pride in the community’s distinctiveness and to feel valued and nourished by the community.
• To foster interest beyond the school: engaging with the local community and developing a national and international awareness.

The ways in which we achieve these aims are described in The Bedales Difference