Established 1998 Website westheathschool.com | Principal, CEO Christina Wells Founded 1998 | |
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Location Ashgrove Road
Sevenoaks
Kent
TN13 1SR
England Motto Rebuilding Lives Through Education |
The New School at West Heath (or simply the New School) is an independent school in Sevenoaks, Kent. It caters for children for whom mainstream schooling has become insufficient, for varying reasons. Some are mentally or physically disabled; others have been through harsh circumstances and suffer from emotional trauma or similar conditions. The school's motto is "Rebuilding Lives Through Education."
Contents
- West Heath School
- The New School at West Heath
- Management
- General information
- 2005
- 2004
- 2003
- 2002
- 2000
- 1999
- Post 16
- Fund a Childs Education FaCE
- References
The school, founded in its current form as a charitable trust on 14 September 1998 as the Beth Marie Centre, is based in 31 acres (13 ha) of parkland on lease from Mohamed Al-Fayed, who contributed almost £3 million towards the school. The building formerly housed the school where Diana Spencer, later Princess of Wales and her two older sisters, Sarah and Jane, received their childhood education. It was then called West Heath Girls' School and was a very exclusive girls' school with around 100 boarding pupils.
West Heath School
The Reverend Philip Bennet Power and his wife, Emma, undertook the education of their own daughters at their Abbey Wood home, West Heath House. The quality of the girls' education attracted other local families to ask the Powers to teach their children and West Heath School thus opened in 1865.
In 1879 the expanding school moved to 1 Ham Common, in what was then the agricultural community of Ham, Surrey. The house, set in over 10 acres (4.0 ha) of grounds, was the former residence of the Duc de Chartres.
In 1890 Misses Sarah, Maria and Anna Buckland and Miss Jane Percival who owned a similar school in Reading joined forces with the ageing Mrs Power at Ham Common and they ran the school until its purchase in 1900 by Misses Emma Lawrence and Margaret Skeat. Miss Elliott joined the staff in 1928 and was appointed Principal the following year.
The development of nearby shops and housing prompted a second move, Ham having become "too suburbanised for a high class girls' school". In 1932 the school moved to its present site, the 18th century Ashgrove House, near Sevenoaks, and the former home of the Elliot family. The larger premises allowed the school to grow from its previous capacity at Ham of about seventy boarders, to over one hundred by the end of the Second World War.
In addition to the Spencer sisters, Issy Van Randwyck and Tilda Swinton were educated there.
In the 1990s the school had financial difficulties due to falling numbers of pupils, and was placed into receivership in 1997.
The New School at West Heath
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund considered buying the school, but decided against it, and Mohamed Al Fayed stepped in to buy West Heath for £2,300,000 on 20 May 1998 as new premises for the Beth Marie Centre. He later pledged to contribute a further £550,000 towards equipping the school.
"I am surprised that the Princess Diana memorial fund, with all its millions in the bank, did not show a greater interest in this project," Al Fayed said in a statement. "I believe it to be a far more fitting tribute to her work than putting her name on tasteless souvenirs."The school was founded in its current form, with Valerie May as Principal, on 14 September 1998. At the start it had around 30 pupils. Boarding began in the year 2000, and there are six boarding houses, each named after one of the trustees (see Management, below); Tarrant, Sissons, Astor, Ruth, Hunniford and Esther.
An additional, more modern, teaching block was built to increase the classroom capacity and overall space for the school.
Of all the celebrity involvement in The New School at West Heath - aside from Al Fayed - is the involvement of Madonna (entertainer). She visited the school in 2010 and funded one kept-publicly-anonymous pupil's entire educational progression through the school.
Management
Founding patron: Mohamed Al-Fayed
The school is governed by a board of nine Trustees/Patrons (who are the tenants of the Al Fayed Charitable Foundation). As of 2013 they were:
School management:
General information
Policy, syllabuses, schemes of work and National Curriculum documents can be made available on request to the Head of Education.
Disabilities which pupils may have include: acute stress disorder, addiction, affective spectrum, agoraphobia, anorexia nervosa, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD/ADD), Asperger syndrome, autism spectrum/high functioning autism, avoidant personality disorder, bipolar disorder, bulimia nervosa, conduct disorder, developmental delay, clinical depression, dyslexia, developmental coordination disorder, epilepsy, exhibitionism, genetic disorders, hysteria, nervous breakdown, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), oppositional defiant disorder, (ODD), general anxiety disorder (GAD), impulse control disorder (kleptomania, intermittent explosive disorder, pyromania, pathological gambling, trichotillomania), emotional or behavioural difficulties, pathological demand avoidance (PDA), panic attacks, pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), seasonal affective disorder (SAD), self-harm (SH), separation anxiety disorder/school refusal, selective mutism, semantic pragmatic disorder, social anxiety (social phobia), Tourette syndrome, Transgender and other various mental health problems.
Many of the disadvantaged pupils have not had the opportunity to get a formal Statement of Special Needs (SSEN) for various reasons.
It received some money from Children in Need in 2004, and teachers and pupils also partook in fund-raising activities for Children in Need as a whole, for example sponsored silences, head shaves, makeup-for-the-day and so on.
2005
GCSE grades:
2004
GCSE grades:
2003
GCSE grades:
2002
Key Stage 3 tests (not GCSE):
2000
GCSE grades:
1999
GCSE grades:
Post 16
As well as teaching pupils from Years 7 to 11, the school operates a section allowing pupils to get "support" from the school while going to college; the school itself does not have staff to teach subjects at A-level. Many continue boarding at the school while going to college elsewhere.
Fund a Child's Education (FaCE)
The New School has set up a fundraising drive, FaCE (Fund a Child's Education) to enable it to help children in need of the school to move from its very large waiting list of potential pupils.