Cartwright
Pickard

Yarm School, recently voted the UK's Best Independent Prep School, has an enviable reputation for first class facilities, excellent results and is widely acknowledged as a very happy, purposeful school community in which every pupil thrives.

Our work makes significant improvements to the arrival and access arrangements for its school community with the introduction of a large, dedicated drop-off, pick-up and parking facility for the Nursery, Pre-prep and Prep School, improving safety and reducing congestion and on-road parking on surrounding roads.

The school also benefits from 2,500sqm of new accommodation on the current Prep School site, enhancing arrival and providing a purpose-built flexible performance space, stunning open-plan learning resource centre and additional teaching accommodation.

Refurbishment of existing accommodation complements these additions to create a music hub, changing rooms and flexible office space for the school's pastoral body.

The new Prep School building, fronting a new car park, creates a distinct focal point and grand sense of arrival to the wider school site, introducing step-free access and improving connectivity between the different teaching buildings.

This two-storey gateway building is clad in a blue grey anodic PPC aluminium, specially selected to complement the school’s existing palette of red and cream. It overlooks extensive soft landscaping measures that create a joyful arrival experience between the car park and the school.

Clear and welcoming signage defines the school’s main entrance which sweeps Northward to the new car park, designed to decongest a main A-road stretching between Yarm Village and a residential area to the South.

This has greatly improved safety for visitors and enables the constant movement of vehicles through the village where previously it would often bottleneck.

Movement through the building has been improved through the addition of a lift and feature staircase which lead to a flexible hall, used as a dining area and an events space through the school day and often playing host to performances and assemblies.

The building also provides several classrooms and a library, featuring stacked bookshelves, bean bags and soft window-side benches that borrow from the post-pandemic parameters of ‘home’ and the associated levels of comfort.

The north facing picture window provides diffused natural light and a view over the green site, creating an inspiring space to relax and study for students with high ambitions.

As part of the scheme’s sustainability strategy, robust materials are designed to mitigate weathering by environmental factors such as UV light and withstand the wet and blustery climate of England’s Northeast.

Following a fabric-first approach, the team collaborated to achieve high performing U-values: on average a 48% improvement in wall, roof, and ground floor U-values over Part L 2013, and 31% improvement over Part L 2021. 

The energy demand of the building has been further reduced passively by maximizing daylight whilst reducing solar gains using skylights and glazed curtain walls.

The energy required to service the building has been further reduced through the use of a highly efficient air source heat pump, efficient lighting and lighting controls, heat recovery, efficient fans and optimised zoning and controls. 

The scheme is all electric and the Air Source Heat Pump installed on site has an ErP rating of A++ using minimal amount of energy to heat the interior spaces.

The new main building is widely used by the school, providing pupils with the facilities and resources to enable their future success and pave the way for those coming through. 

These additions and improvements help in refining the broad school site's dynamic typology by introducing a contemporary aesthetic that reflects the school's progressive attitude and ongoing commitment to invest in and maintain facilities.

The school was recently named Independent Prep School of the Year 2024 at the Tes Schools Awards with Headmaster, Dr Huw Williams, citing the school's new "state of the art facilities" as one of the main contributing factors.