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In 2005 Dame Allan’s Schools marked the 300 year anniversary of the Schools Foundation and launched the Tercentenary Appeal. The campaign raised funds for bursary giving and enabled the Schools to modernise dated facilities and create state of the art ICT facilities and a library to reflect education in a modern world.
The challenge
At Dame Allan’s School we pride ourselves on the level of bursary giving and the breadth of students to whom we are able to offer a Dame Allan’s education. The Tercentenary was an opportunity to do more to provide an education for young people from all cultures and backgrounds within a supportive environment and in turn to grow our schools.
The solution
With the generosity of Allanians, parents, staff and governors, the Tercentenary Appeal raised almost £600,000
These funds meant that a new school library, placed in the middle of the school was built, and as well as being used as a library and resource centre during the school day, the new area enabled pupils to work quietly or do some self-directed study before and after school.
The new ICT resource centre was equipped with workstations with flat screen technology, giving ample room for larger classes. Extra workstations in an adjoining room gave the flexibility for extra ICT lessons.
The success of the Appeal helped Dame Allan’s to offer more bursaries, and for the first time, bursaries for 6th Form entry, something it had been unable to do until now.
Long term benefits
Developments are an important part of the Schools ability to grow and flourish. The facilities created in 2005 and subsequent careful and focussed planning has enabled Dame Allan’s to grow and become more financially resilient. The impacts of which were demonstrated just three years later when the school weathered the financial crash of 2008 and went on the grow further with the Junior School being added in 2010. Further evidence can be seen in the last year, where we were able to adapt to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and support the wider Dame Allan’s family with the Covid-19 Bursary Campaign.
In 2010 we began work on a state of the art, self-contained Junior School and Nursery building at a six-acre site near Hunter’s Moor, Spital Tongues. The total cost of the project was £8,878k which included the purchase of the site and building costs.
The challenge
Previously, children from Nursery to Year 6 were divided between the Senior Schools in Fenham and the aging Linden School buildings in Forest Hall, which was far from ideal.
The solution
Every aspect of the innovative new school was designed around the needs of young children and to provide the school with all of the facilities necessary to provide a quality education in the 21st century.
Nursery and Reception have their own purpose-built self-contained unit, with its own separate entrance. All the classrooms located on the ground floor open out into the outdoor spaces, so children can work and play together in their own safe break-out areas, moving inside and out depending on the weather and their activities. The building also boasts dedicated spaces for performing arts, science, art and design technology as a well as a spacious open-plan library in the heart of the school.
This child-centric approach continues outside with extensive safe areas to play, as well as dedicated coaching areas for netball, rugby, cricket and athletics and an all-weather games area.
Sustainability was a big focus in the build, the new school was constructed using recycled materials wherever possible and in a way that everything can be recycled or reused when the building reaches the end of its life.
Longer term benefits
Bringing our primary-aged children together on one site has helped to strengthen the quality of the Dame Allan’s primary offer and has enabled us to enhance our child-centric provision, making us one of the most popular junior schools in the city today.
The facilities enable us to put active learning at the heart of the curriculum. The children are able to be creative and perform, enjoy playing sport and being active with one another as well as learning about the great outdoors: they explore the grounds of the wooded six-acre site, seeing the natural world first hand and watching the seasons unfold. For our youngest pupils, we have adopted an innovative education approach to outdoor play and learning in the woodland environment, taught by a Skogsmulle trained teacher. Since moving to Hunter’s Moor, the junior school has gone from strength to strength, not just in numbers of pupils attending, but in the achievements of the pupils. The pupils and staff have benefited greatly by being together on one site, sharing expertise and resources and building a happy, cohesive community.
'Pupils are successful in an extensive range of creative and physical pursuits and are supported in their achievements by the wide ranging extra curricular programme, very good sports facilities, excellent teaching and specialist sporting coaching which leaders and governors have provided.’ (ISI, November 2019)
We continue to maintain very close links between the junior and senior schools, so junior school pupils can still benefit from the expertise of specialist teachers and facilities during weekly visits. This also results in a smooth transition from Junior to Senior school for the pupils. Separating the two sites has enabled the Schools to grow and the separate Boys' School, Girls' School and Sixth Form to make better use of the Senior School site in Fenham.
Thanks to the support of donors, the new Junior School means that our pupils have a first class platform from which they can thrive in our happy and purposeful atmosphere, where there is always an enthusiastic ‘buzz’ of activity, and where they are ready and equipped to move onto the next step of their growth and development at the Senior School.
In 2015 the Reece Foundation donated £250,000 and loaned a further £250,000 to create state of the art Design and Technology facilities at Dame Allan’s Schools, now known as the Reece Centre.
Set up in 2007 by the late Dr Alan Reece, a renowned North East engineer, the foundation promotes the improvement of education in engineering, technology and related subjects. Anne Reece, the Foundation’s Chair of Trustees and daughter of the charity’s founder, officially opened the Dr Alan Reece Technology Centre in October 2007.
The challenge
Prior to 2015 design and technology provision consisted of offering Electronic Products to Year 7 to 11 students. We employed one electronics teacher to deliver our entire technology-based curriculum. This was housed in a standard classroom with a batch of soldering irons used for the practical work. It was an uninspiring space where the subject developed very little in the way of creativity and design to our students. As a direct result, in a typical year, around nine boys and no girls opted for the GCSE course. Results were disappointing and very few Dame Allan’s students opted for a design/ engineering related course at university. There was no ‘A’ Level offering for any technology-related subjects at Dame Allan’s.
The solution
The aim was to create a state of the art Design and Technology teaching facility at the Senior Schools, fully fitted out with the latest equipment including 3D printers and sophisticated software. This would enable us to create new educational experiences and career opportunities for students, not only Allanians, but also students from across the region.
Set up in 2007 by the late Dr Alan Reece, a renowned North East engineer, the foundation promotes the improvement of education in engineering, technology and related subjects. Anne Reece, the Foundation’s Chair of Trustees and daughter of the charity’s founder, officially opened the Dr Alan Reece Technology Centre in October 2007.
Longer term benefits
Since funding was granted in 2015, design and technology at Dame Allan's Schools has been transformed. We are hugely indebted to the Reece Foundation for the positive impact that the creation of three state-of-the-art D&T rooms has had on our students and the skills and creativity developed as a result. Over 1300 students have benefited directly from the new facilities with 1150 from Dame Allan’s and a further 160 from local partner schools.
The department now consists of two full-time design technology specialists plus a further half-timetable design technology specialist. We organise an annual outreach school program, inviting Year 6 students from local feeder primary schools to come in and experience the use of specific modern approaches to design and manufacture. We have been running ‘A’ Level courses since September 2016 (first exams in summer 2018), and this summer nine ‘A’ level candidates completed their qualifications with five of those students opting to follow their passion and study design and technology based subjects at university. This would have been inconceivable five years ago.
