Rotherfield Primary School

Rotherfield is a warm, friendly school which helps grow children's futures through a high quality education.

Why choose Rotherfield?

• We are warm and friendly, and go the extra mile to support our children
• We have high quality wrap around care available from 7.45- 6.30pm. Holiday childcare is available at our sister school
• We have specialist staff in computing, PE, Spanish and Music. Provision that is usually only offered in private schools
• Our learning environment is inspirational and supports learning

Our school has beautiful classrooms with bespoke furniture, interactive screens, and wifi capability. We have specialist spaces for computing, music, Spanish and the performing arts. Our curriculum is rich and interesting so that pupils learn well and have fun.

We are fortunate to have a committed and stable staff who really believe in making a difference to children's lives. They always go the extra mile!

Children are encouraged to use their phonic knowledge to read and write during the Literacy Hour. At the end of Year 1 children will take a National Phonics Screening Check, where their class teacher will formally assess their phonic knowledge. This is a national test that all children in year 1 will participate in.

This curriculum is play based, and involves children self-selecting activities. In Nursery we begin to teach the building blocks of reading through early exposure to texts, language and through sound discrimination activities. At Rotherfield we use Government guidance called Letters and Sounds to help teachers plan progression in phonic skills.

It aims to build children’s speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.

We have been working on a classroom refurbishment programme, which is now complete. All rooms have bespoke storage walls, new interactive screens, wifi capability, bespoke furniture and matting. This means our classrooms are great places to learn! We have a refurbished Sports Hall, a beautiful performing arts space with tiered seating, a computing suite, and a Music/Arts Studio. Our dining hall has been refurbished to make an inspirational place for eating: round social tables, and artwork related to our menu on the walls.

The school provides an inspirational learning environment for children, demonstrating our high expectations of what they can achieve. We have a new multi use games area outside too!

Our children are lucky to have 4 specialist staff working with them every week. Specialists like ours are only usually available in private schools, but through working in partnership with Newington Green we can share the cost of such amazing specialist staff. We offer specialist teaching in computing, music, PE and Spanish. The quality of this teaching has been observed as outstanding by School Improvement Professionals.

We believe our children should have access to all the opportunities that are available to other children! We have designed our out and about programme so that by the time children leave us in Y6 they would have had a rich experience of cultural trips and visits throughout their time at Rotherfield. For example trips to the opera, ballet, residential outward bound trips, museums, galleries, sports venues etc.