Dashwood Banbury Academy

15/07/2026

🌍 Eco-Warriors Round-Up: What a Spectacular Green Year! 💚

As we wrap up the 2025/2026 academic year, we want to share a massive shout-out and a huge THANK YOU to our incredible Dashwood Eco-Warriors! They have been absolute superstars over the last ten months, leading the charge to make our school and community a cleaner, greener place.

Here is a look at the amazing projects they have achieved this year:

🌿 Bringing Nature to Life
The Dashwood Pond Rewilding: The team worked hard to rewild our school pond, turning it into a thriving, natural haven for local aquatic life. pond.

Planting in the Park: Our warriors joined the local community to create a wonderful, Winnie the Pooh-themed planting centerpiece designed to attract bees, bugs, and other wildlife! 🐻🐝

Fun School-Wide Competitions: They inspired the whole school by leading the Big Birdwatch, creative habitat-building challenges, and our super-popular sunflower growing competition! 🌻🐦

♻️ Recycling & Waste Champions
Ardley Energy Recovery Facility Visit: The team went on an eye-opening trip to Ardley to learn exactly how waste is managed. They brought this valuable knowledge back to school and delivered fantastic, inspiring whole-school assemblies! 💡

Scrunchable Plastics & Food Waste: They spearheaded a brand-new food waste collection and organized a system to collect and recycle "scrunchable" plastics at local supermarkets.

Daily Litter Picks: Keeping our school grounds beautiful and litter-free, rain or shine! 🧹

📣 Leading the Way - National Green Week: The Eco-Warriors took the lead on our whole-school celebrations for World Environment Week, helping everyone understand how small changes make a big impact.

We are incredibly proud of their dedication, leadership, and teamwork this year. They have proven that you are never too small to make a big difference!

What was your favourite green project this year?

14/07/2026

☀️ What incredible Sports Days we've had in 2026! 🏆

A massive THANK YOU to all of our amazing parents, carers, and family members who came out to support. Your energy, cheers, and enthusiasm created such a wonderful, warm community atmosphere! 🙌❤️

We also want to say a huge well done to all of our pupils for their amazing efforts across our Sports Days this year. You were all absolutely incredible—especially with how hot it has been! 🥵☀️ Your determination, resilience, and positive attitudes in the sunshine made us so incredibly proud.

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for... drumroll, please... 🥁

🌟 The Overall Winners of Sports Day 2026 are... 🌟
💛 YELLOW Aspiration Family! 💛

Huge congratulations to everyone in the Yellow Family for an outstanding performance! A massive well done to all of our houses for showing incredible teamwork, sportsmanship, and giving it your absolute all in the heat. 👏🎉

13/07/2026

Thinking about a career in education or school leadership?

Whether you’re taking your first steps into teaching or looking to progress into leadership, we’re here to support your journey.

Visit our newly updated website to explore current opportunities, training pathways and everything you need to build your career with Aspirations Learning.

13/07/2026

Thinking about a career in education or school leadership?

Whether you’re taking your first steps into teaching or looking to progress into leadership, we’re here to support your journey.

Visit our newly updated website to explore current opportunities, training pathways and everything you need to build your career with Aspirations Learning.

www.aspirationslearning.org

17/06/2026

What an incredible experience we have had! Camp Night has been a highlight of Term 6 so far for both the children and staff. Everyone was engaged with all the activities across both days, and it was amazing to see everyone supporting each other to build confidence when staying away from home for the first time. The children used their creativity and critical thinking skills to keep an egg from cracking when dropped from a height, and their communication and collaboration skills during our carousel of team building activities. We hope that this experience has helped develop key life skills that the children will continue to use throughout their lives.

16/06/2026

We are looking for a Teaching Assistant to join our team. For more details and to apply, please follow this link:

Dashwood Banbury Academy, United Kingdom

12/06/2026

Harriers Banbury Academy have a position for an Assistant Principal with responsibilities for Inclusion & SENCO and a Nursery Lead Practitioner. To find out more details, please visit their website: https://www.harriers-aspirations.org/about-us/vacancies/

09/06/2026

🧗‍♂️ Reaching New Heights! 🧗‍♀️
Last week, some of our pupils from Years 3 and 4 scaled new heights at a 'Confidence in Climbing' session at Clip 'n Climb in Bicester!

The mission? To face fears, build self-belief, and step out of comfort zones. Safe to say, they absolutely crushed it! Every single student pushed themselves to the limit, showing incredible resilience and determination.

As if scaling the walls wasn't enough, some of our brave climbers took on ultimate challenges—including climbing completely blindfolded and balancing a ring on their heads while going up! 😮🎒

A massive thank you to North Oxfordshire School Sport Partnership for organizing such a brilliant event, and to Clip 'n Climb Bicester for being such fantastic hosts! 🌟

03/06/2026

Our Dashwood Grove Library has undergone an amazing transformation and is now a vibrant, inviting space that is inspiring a love of reading across our school. Thanks to the proceeds generated from the sale of our pupil-led Dashwood News newspaper, we have been able to purchase a fantastic range of new books, which our pupils are thoroughly enjoying and are excited to explore.

A huge thank you goes to Mrs Galloway and Mrs Gordon-Weeks, who have worked tirelessly to redesign and refresh the library. Their creativity and dedication have helped create a wonderful environment that beautifully showcases our new collection and encourages pupils to discover the joy of reading. We are incredibly proud of our transformed library and the opportunities it provides for our children to learn, imagine and grow.

03/06/2026

Inspired by a selection of poems from Words Can Fly: Uplifting Poems for Children by Sunday Times bestselling author Donna Ashworth, our whole-school art gallery celebrated the creativity, imagination and individuality of every pupil. Each class explored the themes, emotions and messages within the poetry, producing a stunning collection of artwork that brought the words to life in unique and meaningful ways.

It was a pleasure to open our doors to pupils, parents, carers and the wider Dashwood community to share and celebrate these wonderful outcomes. The gallery showcased not only the artistic talents of our children but also their ability to connect with literature, express themselves creatively and inspire others through their work. We are incredibly proud of every pupil and grateful to everyone who joined us to make the event such a special success.

Since the art gallery, the art work has been collated to make uplifting displays all along our Learning Lane so we can all continue to enjoy it!