David Bailey, Principal

Hello, I am David Bailey and I am proud and honoured to be Principal here at Biddenham. Firstly, apologies for not doing this part of Open Evening in person – we enjoy doing this live in our lovely main hall with our students presenting – but we felt it best this year to have a ‘blended’ Open Evening and do this part as a recording and invite you all in to have a look round and meet our staff and students. During Open Evening you will have an opportunity to speak face to face with myself and Ms Grylls and the senior team and quiz us on anything you have heard here or indeed anything you would like to talk to us about.

Myself and Ms Grylls are incredibly proud of the school, and what our students achieve, where they go onto in life and most of all we are proud to have helped them to become the people they are today. We have been doing it for some time now – this is my 21st year here and it is Eleanor’s 18th and in that time we have sent our own children to Biddenham, all of whom have thrived and developed here – four of the five are still here. So we have been where you are today in choosing a secondary school for your children – it’s an important decision and one that you want to get right.

You are fortunate that there are many good schools in Bedford and we find ourselves at Biddenham at a good time in our history – we have a great staff team (35 of whom are ex-Biddenham students) who are committed to our vision and our students and a we have a good reputation as we strive to be a high achieving, inclusive school with a strong family ethos at the heart of the communities we serve. We have a strong track record of helping and making sure our students get to where they want to be in life and enjoying school and their learning.

So the rest of this presentation is by the students – some of the Year 7s will tell you about the last few weeks starting out here and our Head Girl and Head Boy will tell you about their six years in the school – there will be a big finish by our Head – Eleanor Grylls. I hope you enjoy listening to them – one of the advantages of this being a recording is that if you are not enjoying it you can fast forward to the student bits – but I look forward to seeing you in person on Monday 4th October.