We Are KES Bath | About | King Edward's School, Bath

AN INSPIRING EDUCATIONAL SETTING

Ongoing and significant investment in our facilities ensures that KES pupils benefit from an inspiring, high-quality educational environment, with specialist spaces for learning, creativity, sport and co-curricular life across the School.

At King Edward’s Prep School, our North Road campus provides younger pupils with an outstanding environment in which to learn, explore and play. An award-winning building is centred around its engaging library, with dedicated teaching spaces for Science, Computing, Art and Music, alongside the specialist Brenda Medlock Technology Centre. Extensive outdoor spaces, including an all-weather pitch, play equipment and areas designed for outdoor learning, further enrich the educational experience.

The Prep School is also the focus of the School’s latest £3 million programme of investment, supporting the move of younger pupils to North Road and the creation of a single Prep School for ages 3–11. This includes purpose-designed Early Years and Key Stage 1 outdoor learning and play environments, together with further investment in specialist teaching and learning facilities including a new performance space.

At the Senior School, continued investment has created an extensive range of modern and specialist facilities. The recently opened Thomson Building provides 14 new classrooms alongside social spaces, while the three-storey Wessex Building incorporates the School library, dining facilities and a multi-purpose space for concerts, lectures and enrichment activities, with views across Bath and the surrounding countryside.

Recent investment across the campus has also included the expansion of our STEM facilities to provide 12 Science laboratories, the Rose Drama Studio, a Modern Foreign Languages Centre, a state-of-the-art Media Suite, a contemporary Sixth Form hub and significant improvements to our sporting facilities, including an all-weather Astro and specialist gym supporting the School’s Strength and Conditioning programme.

Together, these developments reflect our ongoing commitment to investing in the KES campus, ensuring that our facilities continue to evolve to support the very best learning experiences and opportunities for pupils at every stage of their education.

KES IS ‘PROUD TO REMAIN ACADEMICALLY PACY’

KES is one of the one of the top performing co-educational independent schools in the South West and is consistently ranked amongst the very best school in the region in the Sunday Times Parent Power Guide. The School is rated excellent’ in every category in its ISI Inspection Report, whilst the Good Schools Guide notes that King Edwards is ‘Proud to remain academically pacy but equally proud that it's also an enriching and nurturing school in which pupils thrive.’

Whilst the academic achievement of our pupils rightly remains an important aim of the School, the outstanding results which are regularly achieved by pupils are not at the expense of their cultural, physical or social development, which are of vital importance to a pupil’s rounded development and future life chances. Academic endeavour is balanced with a full and vibrant co-curricular programme and a culture of mutual support.

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BATH’S OLDEST SCHOOL

The dissolution of Bath Priory by Henry VIII in 1539 cost the city its original grammar school, which had been run by the monks. Due to the lack of education available for their sons, the Mayor and citizens of Bath petitioned the young king, King Edward VI, to provide funds to establish a new grammar school. As a result, the King granted a Charter in July 1552, establishing ‘a school for the instruction of boys and young men in grammar to continue for ever’.

Today, King Edward’s School is an Independent Co-Educational Day School comprising Pre-Prep (3-7yrs), Junior (7-11yrs) and Senior (11-18yrsThe Pre-Prep School occupies a magnificent Victorian building in a delightful, leafy setting on Weston Lane, to the west of the city. The Senior School moved to its current location, a beautiful 14 acre site on North Road on the south-eastern edge of the city, in 1961. The Junior School, which occupies discrete, purpose-built accommodation on the same site as the Senior School, relocated to North Road in 1990. KES’ impressive playing fields are situated around a mile away in Bathampton.

In keeping with tradition, the School continues to celebrate its Founding by King Edward VI, with a Founder’s Day Service in Bath Abbey every July. At the service, the Charter is presented and read by our Head Prefects to a congregation of KES staff, pupils, parents, governors and invited guests including the Lord Mayor of Bath.

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KES SUSTAINABILITY

With big ambitions and an all-encompassing plan for the future, the KES Sustainability Strategy is at the heart of everything we do at school, from the food we eat and the new facilities we build, to the energy we consume, and the career advice offered to our sixth formers.

Our pupils take a leading role in setting our strategy, working closely with members of the Senior Management and Estates and Facilities teams alongside staff as part of the Sustainability Committee.

Our Sustainability Strategy embraces six key areas of school life:

• The ENERGY we consume
• The FOOD we eat
• Our WASTE MANAGEMENT policies
• How we tend and preserve our BIODIVERSITY/GROUNDS
• Our approach to TRANSPORT to and at school
• The embedding of sustainability in our CURRICULUM

Click the link below to find out more about our Sustainable approach to education.
 

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