Great Oaks Small School (A Potted History)
Great Oaks Small School from the rear
For Human Scale Education
We began life unofficially 10 years ago when Julie and Liz found themselves home educating their respective younger children. Two years on, with five students, we were deemed to be a school so attended the HSE course on “How to Start a Small School” run by Colin Hodges through Human Scale Education.
This was inspirational and terrifying! Julie and I decided we couldn’t possibly take on a task that monumental; the next day, with my husband John handling the finances, we started!
There followed rounds of inspections by this, that and the other body, most of whom were very helpful and supportive. This culminated in Ofsted registration in March 2003, at this point we had 8 students in our home.
We moved to a cottage in Sandwich, Kent in September 2005 and again in August 2006 with 18 to a large farmhouse in Minster, Near Ramsgate with a barn, ripe for development, which we hope will become our permanent home. It is light and airy and we have been able to grow to encompass all the secondary age groups.
Currently our students are aged 10 – 18. This is our fourth year of post 16 students who study additional GCSEs, AS and A levels and a programme of independent life skills.
Great Oaks runs in much the same way as most Small Schools, being very democratic and with a green ethos. We have two exciting developments on the near horizon, one the building of a reed bed drainage system below the barn so that we can install toilets. The whole project will form the basis of the school "project" and will include the archeology associated with digging big holes in the garden! Ebbsfleet is very important archeologically speaking as it has had settlements on it since 4,000BC.
The other new development is the ever urgent need to drive the fund-raising to enable us to buy the property. We had originally aimed to do this in our third year of occupancy – we are now entering our 4th year... Rome was not built in a day!
The development of the barn into specialist and general teaching areas is still progressing – again much needed funds for that project.
There is a curriculum bias towards Art, Design & Technology and Land-Based & Environmental Science. We currently offer entry level GCSE, AS and A level courses and we are developing links with local course and employment providers and running flexi-schooling where apprpriate.
We are immensely proud of all our students. Most have gone on to either college courses or employment, three currently in their second or third year of under graduate studies. We run a new link course with Thanet College during the final year of school to encourage students to new horizons, this in conjunction with their Independence course after the public examinations in the Summer term. Great Oaks also has a wonderful team of dedicated staff who give 200% to the Great Oaks Community.
Any other Small School community, particularly secondary; do make contact we would love to make connections. We also think Human Scale Education is the best thing that ever happened to us!
Links:
HSE Website: http://www.hse.org.uk/
HSE Small Schools: http://www.hse.org.uk/sas/smallschools.html