St Mary’s Bryanston Square is a Church of England school for children from 3 to 11 years.
We are a church school with a strong Christian ethos. Our vision for the school is:
Our values are based around Jesus’ command to:
This means that we value ourselves as special and unique, we value each other and treat each other with kindness, respect and grace, and we value families and communities as the places where love can flourish. At St Mary’s we welcome everyone to be part of our school community: as well as a number of Christian families, many of our children are Muslim or from other faith backgrounds. This is a real strength of our school, and part of what makes our school community such a wonderful place.
History of St Mary’s School
The school was originally founded in 1824 in York Street, next to the parish church, and served a wide area until other local schools were built. An Infants’ schoolroom was added in 1888 but destroyed in an air raid in 1944. In 1969 it moved to a new building in Enford Street, and in 2000 a Nursery Class was added.
St Mary’s Today
St Mary’s school ‘is a cohesive community focused on raising standards while maintaining the strong culture of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’ (Ofsted 2014).
Our school has a long tradition of providing a broad and creative education for all our children. We want every child to achieve as highly as they can, in all areas of learning and life. Teaching in the school is of a high quality, giving every child has the chance to succeed. There are also thriving before, during and after-school clubs offering languages, football, music, art, debating and a high range of sports. Sport is a particular strength of the school, with excellent teaching, a generous playground (for central London) and plenty of opportunities to take part in competitions. This year, we started working with London Music Masters to enhance the musical opportunities for all our children, too.
The children wear uniform and their behaviour is ‘exemplary’ (Ofsted). We are very well supported by our parents in striving to provide our children with a safe, nurturing environment in which to learn.
The school has an active ‘Friends’ association that includes parents and staff. The Friends have worked hard in recent years to both fundraise for projects and to encourage all parents to become involved in the school. The local business community is also very supportive – our Christmas Fair Santa came from the local fishing shop! Employees from some local firms also come in to hear children read. We have a thriving relationship with our Church, St Mary’s Bryanston Square, who lead acts of worship and run clubs in school for the children. Our headteacher is a long-standing member of St Mary’s Church.
We are very proud of all our wonderful school community, and we always enjoy welcoming visitors to St Mary’s.