Clayesmore

Iwerne Minster, Blandford Forum, Dorset, DT11 8LL

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Clayesmore is a co-educational boarding and day school on a 62-acre site in North Dorset, taking children from Nursery through to Sixth Form on a single campus. Founded in 1896, it has around 414 pupils and a long-established learning support department.

Nursery, Pre-Prep, Prep, Senior and Sixth Form all share the site at Iwerne Minster. Brothers and sisters of very different ages stay on one campus, and a child who starts at four need never change school again. Boarding is full, weekly or flexible, with day places alongside, so the arrangement can change with a posting without the child having to move.

The school calls its approach Inclusive Excellence, setting high expectations alongside close pastoral care. Pupils are placed in one of five houses, and the LEX programme runs on Saturday mornings across five years to build skills and self-knowledge outside the timetable.

The learning support department has specialised in dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD for more than twenty-five years and holds CReSTeD accreditation. It is led by the Deputy Head Academic and SENCO with a specialist team who assess pupils and brief their teachers. One-to-one sessions sit alongside teaching methods used across every classroom. Recent leavers have gone on to Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and Imperial College London.

Families claiming the Continuity of Education Allowance receive CEA plus a further 10 per cent; families not claiming CEA receive a 20 per cent Forces discount. A sibling discount of 5 per cent for the eldest and 10 per cent for each subsequent child applies alongside. Scholarships are assessed in January for entry at Years 7, 9 and 12, in academic work, music, art, drama, design and technology and sport, and means-tested bursaries are considered case by case by the Bursary Committee.