Courage - Hope - Respect

‘Everything is possible for one who believes’ Mark 9:23

INSET DAY – Friday 15th November 2024. | Proud to be an Essential Letters and Sounds school | Attendance Counts – Moment’s Matter. Our attendance target is 96.5%.

Welcome to St. George’s Beneficial CE Primary School

St George’s Beneficial CE Primary School is a thriving mainstream school for children aged 4-11 years. We provide exceptional teaching, excellent pastoral care and are incredibly proud of our relationship with the Portsmouth Diocese. Our distinctive Christian vision underpins our aspirations for our community. This inspires us to live out our lives with Courage, Hope and Respect.

As well as our Christian values of Courage, Hope and Respect, we work to embed our learning behaviours of…

Taking responsibility for ours and others’ learning.

Support and actively listen.

Discuss and explain our ideas.

A Unique History

In 1755, Portsmouth’s famous Charity School opened, affectionately referred to as ‘Old Benny’. For nearly 200 years, it taught the children of the poor in Portsea, where the Beneficial Society, which founded the school, brought a touch of colour into their drab existence. This building remains in Kent Street; now Groundlings theatre company.

The Education Act of 1870 meant many Board Schools were being erected in the Portsmouth area absorbing the children of all classes of residents. The Beneficial Society continued to support the school until 1933 when the society found itself out of date and so dissolved. The school became the responsibility of the Local Authority and continued until 1939 when the Second World War forced the evacuation of the children to safer areas. In September 1940 the school became a junior school, serving the area till 1962 when it transferred to the present site.

In 2015 St George’s Beneficial School had a ‘make over’. We had a grand opening with Hugh Dennis cutting a tape for us. (See the photos below from our grand opening).

Our library was positioned centrally in an airy purpose built area which will includes multi media resources. The music and drama room moved to the west hall and has specialist seating for audiences to enjoy our performances and concerts. The food technology room was repositioned and enlarged to become a specific learning area for food technology, science and art. The garden alongside encourages wildlife through different environments but also have beds for growing food. Our new office area includes a conference room to accommodate meetings.

This vastly improved the facilities and increasing our capacity. We now have 14 classes with 50 pupils in a year group.