About us

The Dean Close Foundation is a growing, vibrant and diverse family of independent schools and nurseries, uniting around a shared vision and set of values. These spring from the origins of Dean Close School, which was founded in 1886 in memory of Dean Francis Close, Rector of Cheltenham and educational philanthropist. The Christian ethos of that original school continues today where the aim is that every child should be given the opportunities to flourish, underpinned by its core values of courage, contribution and love which are the guiding principles behind its educational vision.

The Foundation is an educational charity providing support to six schools and seven nurseries within its group, creating a strong community that can share best practice, resources and a secure future.  This brings many benefits to each school and nursery, and to each child and staff member within them, providing ambitious strategic leadership as well as creating a strong community that can share best practice, ideas, resources and a secure future.   

Our community is everything to us, where we aim to grow and deepen relationships between the family of schools and nurseries, offering outstanding care and education from the first months of life into adulthood.

It might seem impossible to have one overarching aim or ambition for the whole Foundation and everyone within it, given this diversity, but we do have such an aim: that of Flourishing. It is our ambition that every individual, every team, each school or nursery and the whole organisation should Flourish.