Dharma Primary School was founded by a group of parents in 1994, after two years of fund-raising. On 9 September 1994, the school opened its doors to four children in a house in Queen's Park, Brighton. On this day the school received blessings from founder patron, Luang Por Sumedho, a Buddhist monk and teacher, and blessings were also sent from the Dalai Lama, who later became a patron of the school. This was the first full-time school in Great Britain based on the Buddhist faith. By 2000 the co-educational school was teaching children between the ages of three and eleven. By 2005 the number of pupils stood at seventy, with almost equal numbers of boys and girls.