St Buryan - Education

Education

The first record of a school in the parish was in 1801, on a site adjacent to the old poorhouse beside the church buildings in the main village. This was administered through the poorhouse, whose trustees were also the trustees of the school. A new school was built in 1830 which now forms the village hall. The school was subscription based and pupils paid a penny a day toward their education. When compulsory education was introduced in 1875 these buildings were extended to deal with the influx of pupils. The school moved again to its present site, a new purpose built building along Rectory Road, in 1910.

Today St Buryan primary school teaches pupils between the ages of four and eleven and is a feeder school for nearby Cape Cornwall Secondary School. There was, until recently, an attached nursery for children of pre-school age, but this has subsequently moved to new premises in the village. For many years the school taught in its original three classrooms. Under the headship of Paul Gazzard, however, the site has been expanded to include a fourth classroom, a hall and gymnasium, a library and a new reception area. This expansion was made financially possible in part due to a spell as a grant maintained school in which the school had direct control over its own budget. Under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 the school became a foundation school.

The school currently teaches 87 pupils from the parish and surrounding villages. There has been a steady rise in pupil numbers in recent years, mirroring the population rise in the parish as a whole, supprted by the improved facilities. All pupils come from a white British background and use English as their first language. Nearly six percent of pupils have Statements of Special Educational Needs, which is above the national average. In the recent Ofsted inspection pupils’ standards of achievement were classed as good overall with above average results in Science and English and very high attainment in Mathematics.