Bloxham School A GSG School

Sports

Equestrian centre or equestrian team - school has own equestrian centre or an equestrian team.

Shooting

Sailing

What The Good Schools Guide says

Headmaster

Since 2013, Paul Sanderson BSc MPhil. A native Ulsterman who graduated in biology from St Andrews before training as a teacher at Oxford, then did an MPhil at Cambridge. Early posts in the science department at maintained schools including Lancaster Royal Grammar and Carr Hill High before moving to director of curriculum and deputy head at Gordonstoun. Genial and at ease in his comfortable study, he expounds on the wider remit of the school: ‘Our job is to educate, body, mind and soul… We’re trying to prepare kids for when they are 35, not for 18.’ He has improved the exam results, ‘not by being selective, but through teaching and learning and making sure resources are available’ and has developed links to businesses by encouraging degree-level apprenticeships and direct consultation. ‘We asked employers like Deloittes, “Are we producing kids you would want to employ?”’ The result is a broadened curriculum and community service at lower sixth.

‘A nice man, very approachable to parents, and the kids often say they’ve had a chat with him,’ said a parent. Another told us he’s ‘very genuine, very determined, readily available if you need him’. Married with three school-age children, he continues to referee rugby matches, lead the school climbing club and teach – we were delighted to find him chasing woodlice round the lab in the upper sixth biology lesson.

Entrance

Three main points of entry but children are accepted for occasional places too. At 11+ children sit the school’s own exams in English, maths and verbal reasoning and are interviewed as part of the assessment morning. At 13+ the ISEB Common Entrance procedure. At 16+ (when around 15-20 join), GCSE results must include six 5s, including English and maths, with a 6 in any A level subjects to be studied (or 7 if studying maths and sciences). Internationals arrive at 13+, 14+ and 16+.

Exit

Between five and 10 per cent of pupils leave after GCSEs. Ninety-five per cent head off to university, with popular choices including Newcastle, Cardiff, Nottingham, Reading and Exeter. Others to Sandhurst, professional sports, art foundation and degree-level apprenticeships. Sometimes the odd medic.

Latest results

School says it does not publish results for GCSEs and A levels. The last ones we have were from 2021: 59 per cent 9-7 at GCSE; 40 per cent A*/A at A level (74 per cent A*-B).

Teaching and learning

In lower school (years 7 and 8), small classes are taught by subject specialist teachers, with sets for maths. A broad grounding in academic subjects – including Latin, either French or Spanish and sciences – is accompanied by a wide choice of creative activities. Numbers expand in the senior school (year 9 up) when children are taught in classes of 20 maximum, with sets in some subjects. The emphasis is on preparation for GCSE, with students taking triple or double science, a choice of French or Spanish and additional maths for some. A level options include computer science, economics, PE, photography, psychology and theatre studies, with some popular vocational courses such as BTEC sports science or hospitality and a CTEC in business. There’s also the chance of an EPQ, mini MBA or psychology programme (mini MAPP).

It’s a long day – 8.15am to 6pm – with obligatory Saturdays (optional sports in lower school) but supervised homework sessions and a dizzying number of activities are included in the timetable, and children appear unfazed. However, one parent reckoned, ‘It wouldn’t be for everybody.’

We eavesdropped on an English class celebrating a successful spelling test with a box of chocolates, before moving on to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Pupils enthusiastically raised their hands to take part in the informal brainstorming. Another English lesson we saw involved older students in quiet discussion about classical hero, Jason of Iolcos. Elsewhere we visited the cookery class, where the chef was rustling up a pasta sauce. ‘It’s the best lesson,’ said one boy. ‘Sometimes he shouts at you - like Gordon Ramsay, a good shout - and you get to eat it afterwards.’

The school adapted quickly and well to the first lockdown of the Covid crisis, issuing individual laptops to all. ‘We locked down before the national lockdown,’ said a parent – ‘the transition was very smooth and they were straight onto Zoom.’ Some of the advantages of virtual classroom continued when doors were reopened, eg joining for lessons with the partner school in Africa. Good teacher to pupil ratio, we heard.

Learning support and SEN

‘The days of having a defined learning support department have gone,’ says school. ‘Learning support is for everyone. Every member of staff is expected to differentiate. You are meeting every child at where their needs are.’ All children have a laptop to work on from day one and provision for dyslexic children includes specific resources, eg reader pens and exam concessions. A parent was fully satisfied with her child’s dyslexia support: ‘They managed to do it all within the class, which didn’t separate her out.’ Curriculum adaptations meant the student substituted a foreign language for individualised study skills sessions. The school accommodates mild difficulties in attention, communication and interaction, and has experience of hearing impairment and looked-after children.

The arts and extracurricular

Music is massive, we heard, and not just from the enthusiastic music staff. Music lessons are timetabled to year 9 and all children take an instrument in year 7. As well as playing in one of the two orchestras or many ensembles (the chapel choir has sung at the Vatican) there is a house music competition – ‘the biggest school event of the year,’ according to one pupil (A-lister musician parents drop in to adjudicate – this year’s theme, Glastonbury Headliners). Music GCSE is popular, with double the national average taking A level, and each year some opt for degree level. A band room and several practice rooms accommodate the 200 individual instrument lessons each week.

Drama available at both GCSE and A level. The school has employed an actor in residence to encourage thespians, resulting in several students acting and writing for the National Youth Theatre. LAMDA on offer, and there is a house drama competition although our guides felt this was less inclusive than house music.

Artworks by students are displayed in the dining room, and recent award-winners found their creations in the Royal Academy and top of a national cartoon competition. A bed of red and purple ceramic poppies, inspired by the Tower of London’s display, was outside the chapel when we visited, while wacky textile designs were on show in the Raymond Technology Centre’s wonderful steel and glass building, where we got a bird’s eye view from the gallery, watching the green-aproned students learning to use a soldering iron.

The school puts on a crazy number of extracurricular activities and clubs, some under the banner of the Euanoia (beautiful thinking) Society. Clubs include Future Young Female Leaders club and a politics society where young parliamentarians can find their voice. The more classically inclined can study Homer and the Greats in their lunch hour, while younger scientists get their teeth into making a new toothpaste formula in the bronze CREST award. Trips include DofE, climbing club and CCF, last year visiting the Breacon Beacons and night-time sea kayaking in the Highlands.

Sport

A fabulous sports hall with its own moniker, the Dewey, hosts a huge range of physical activities – all the usual team sports of rugby, hockey, cricket, netball and tennis in the top schools’ league, as well as alternatives such as fives, squash, badminton, golf and the rarefied clay shooting, plus riding. A pool allows for swimming, water polo and recreational swims (we heard 6.30am was a popular booking) and there’s a mean-looking fitness centre for strength and conditioning, along with a climbing wall. Sport or PE is timetabled three times a week across the school and many choose to play more often as part of the enrichment opportunities. One mum told us, ‘My son is very sporty; he’s been allowed to follow his passion, doing horse-riding and rugby,’ but added, ‘My daughter is not a great lover of playing hockey and netball week in, week out… though they do have yoga and dance, now.’ Head celebrates individual and team successes alike: ‘The bit I’m most proud of is that every child will represent the school in sport over the year. It’s equally about your fifth team player as your internationals.’

Boarders

Bloxham’s boarding structure is adapted for the 21st century, with permutations to suit every lifestyle. Seven boarding houses, four for boys and three for girls, allow students to choose full or day boarding, the latter including at least two nights’ stay per week. ‘We find that’s a good mix, they get to sit and do their prep at school and get a chance to hang out with mates and do a social in the evening. When they come home, it’s home time,’ said a parent. That said, we heard a lot of flexis convert to full boarding as they rise up the school.

Every house has a mix of year groups and international students are also distributed across various houses. Variety of dorms and bedrooms: we saw eight beds for year 3 and three-bed rooms with bunks for year 4; sixth formers get a single room with shared bathroom. There are kitchens on every floor for snacks, plus large sitting rooms with TV and sofas – we spotted a pool table, ping pong and X-Box handsets to pass the time and there’s a yearly competition to keep a plant alive! Many full boarders depart for home after Saturday sport. The boarding staff say there are always groups available for evening and weekend activities: ‘The most important thing is that the boarding houses are busy every night or you could lurch into Travelodge country,’ said the deputy head. As for homesickness, ‘It’s less than you think because of the flexi boarding,’ we heard.

High praise for the matrons. ‘They are wonderful, they are like surrogate mums to the kids,’ said a parent. Another reckoned the school’s greatest strength is ‘the quality of the houseparents’ who ‘foster a real sense of the house spirit’.

Ethos and heritage

Just outside Banbury lies the substantial village of Bloxham, which boasts houses in honey-coloured stone and a Gothic Revival church with the highest steeple of Oxfordshire. GE Street designed both church and Bloxham school, which has an ecclesiastical flavour to its old stone schoolhouse and chapel. However, since its founding in 1860 by PR Egerton, who established the boys’ school in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, it has gradually increased and expanded into the extensive grounds and village beyond, though is by no means big. ‘It’s a small school, they see the individual,’ said a parent. ‘We can compete at the top level in sport and drama but its not too big that we don’t know you,’ agrees the head.

Our tour started at the neo-Gothic chapel with stained glass and well-polished pews, where pupils have weekly services from the chaplain, and many opt for confirmation in year 9. Sympathetic additions have been added to the original building to provide kitchens and convivial dining rooms beneath, where we indulged in freshly cooked fish and chips with minted mushy peas (‘Have as much as you can of anything,’ a boy recommended). Dodging the raindrops, we ran a short way to the Great Hall, equipped with a proscenium theatre for the annual school production and twice-weekly assemblies. Humanities and languages classrooms upstairs were arranged with seats and tables according to teacher preference, some in rows, some as horseshoes. Egerton’s original mullioned library has been superseded by a modern, glassy structure, where we found well-stocked shelves, racks of journals, and imaginative reading lists for each year group. The corridors of the nearby science block had been joyfully updated with chemistry symbol wallpaper and motivating quotes: ‘Science and everyday life should not be separated’ (Rosalind Franklin). The classrooms either side revealed students working in small groups at lab benches and on screens. Outside manicured lawns and an arboretum in the inner court lead off to several grass pitches, an Astro and an informal garden with picnic benches. We visited the day pupils’ house, Exham, and strolled through the quiet village to find the sports hall and distant cricket pitch. The sixth form are free to use the local shops and to carry out community service at the primary school and care home, as well as further afield.

We met the children on Compassion Day, which involved a catwalk of youthful mufti (mostly jeans and PJs) but usual uniform is smart black blazer, white shirt or blouse and dark skirt or trousers, with a house tie for boys, business suits for sixth formers.

Pastoral care, inclusivity and discipline

The size and structure of the school, as well as the tried and tested house system, lends itself to pastoral care. Small tutor groups meet daily, house captains meet regularly with the houseparents and a school council sees the headmaster for more formal complaints. Tutor group meetings cover a programme of issues, such as drugs, eating disorders and bullying. ‘Drugs, there’s no problem,’ said one housemaster. ‘Teenagers now drink less than they ever have done and we have a very clear behaviour policy.’ Bold claims too (unusually) that inter-years bullying doesn’t happen. ‘With boys, it’s more constant point scoring – we deal with it quickly.’ A parent concurred: ‘The message goes out, if you misbehave, you are not welcome here.’ As to the Everyone’s Invited social media revelations that have hit so many schools, ‘We’ve not had reason to believe they are weak on that sort of thing,’ one parent said, ‘though it’s very hard for schools to police parties that go on outside school.’ Anglican values of tolerance, kindness, service and respect are valued: ‘Having a mindset as a giver not a taker,’ sums up the head.

Ninety per cent of activities on offer are taken by permanent staff, with a few visiting specialists, eg Mandarin teachers. Means staff know the pupils really well and get to know different aspects of the school. We heard that the physics teacher played organ in chapel, an assistant housemaster worked in the marketing department and senior management regularly did lunch duties. The chaplain, school nurses and a counsellor are on hand all week to support pastorally.

Pupils and parents

‘Every school has its characters but on the touchline at weekends, you realise you are talking to people like you,’ said a parent. Apparently this means not the super-rich but everyday working parents. Day boarders come from as far as Oxford, Stratford and Buckingham in a fleet of minibuses, boarders from further afield, including London – and currently around 25 from overseas. The students we met were unspoilt and enthusiastic about school, as well as open-minded about their ambitions in life. ‘How mature and grounded and decent the guys are!’ exclaimed one parent.

Parents are happy with communications, favouring email as the best method to reach houseparents or matrons. ‘It was dealt with appropriately,’ said a parent about a complaint she made. ‘I was heard and it was resolved.’ There are formal parents’ evenings to cover a child’s progress and more informal meetings with houseparents in the local pub to get to know one another. Many parents attended the school themselves, and we were delighted to meet a fourth-generation Old Bloxhamist, now working at the school.

Money matters

A tiered system, depending on age and boarding type, with a few activities extra. Scholarships and means-tested bursaries up to 100 per cent of fees.

The last word

Once seen as a school for local farming families, Bloxham has been discovered by parents looking for an all-round experience, an antidote to the hothouse Oxford independents and one that produces challenging and free-thinking team players. Bloxham provides the best of both worlds – a small community school with a broad curriculum. Extensive grounds and a competitive spirit make it ideal for outdoorsy children and the versatile boarding system meets the modern family’s lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, families keep coming back.

Special Education Needs

Our SEN provision is dependent on each individual and their specific needs. The School needs to be aware of any known special educational need which may affect a child's ability to take full advantage of the education provided at the School. Parents of a child who has any special educational needs should provide the School with full details prior to the admissions procedure, at registration, or subsequently before accepting the offer of a place. Based on the information provided, the Head of Learning Support and the Headmaster through consultation with the parents, shall determine the reasonable adjustments that are required for the applicant during the admissions procedure and those that are required should the offer of a place be made, in accordance with the School's obligations under equality legislation. Bloxham School runs a special three-year course for up to six dyslexic pupils each year from Year 9 to the GCSE year. This course, which replaces modern foreign languages on the timetable, was opened in 1985. For entry, pupils should have a WISC or BAS combined score of 120 or more. After-school tuition is also available for dyslexic pupils in Years 7 and 8, and for dyslexic pupils in Years 9 to 11 who are not on the course. Because the course has for so many years drawn high-achieving pupils to the school, dyslexia has a high standing in the school community.

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