Allenby Primary School

All of the work that we do within the school revolves around our mission statement and school aims. Our aims are deliberately broad as governors and staff believe that we must not only take into account our curricular aims, but other areas of school life are equally important, such as: - the learning environment; the behaviour which we expect from children; our expectations of staff; the relationship which we have with parents; the appearance and use of the site; the way we manage our finances and the role of governors.

Our school is a small, caring community, where individuals are valued and achieve self-esteem through success. Children and adults are encouraged to belong to, learn and develop in an inclusive and positive learning environment. Our actions impact on others – ‘what we do matters’ – so in learning, attitudes, behaviour and aspirations we strive to make a difference for the better.

Allenby Primary School has opted out of the requirement to follow a mainly Christian act of collective worship, in line with Ealing SACRE (Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education). Assemblies (both school and class) contribute to pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural development. Non-contentious non-denominational themes and issues from a variety of faiths are selected with time for silent reflection. We follow the London Borough of Ealing agreed syllabus. We believe that it is the responsibility of the parents to educate their child in the ways of any particular religion/faith.

In school religious education is mainly part of cross-curricular topic work but it is also taught as a specific subject for study. There is no denominational partiality. Emphasis is placed largely on understanding, responding and valuing all religions. The school has a multi-faith approach within which ethical, moral issues are raised and all major festivals celebrated.

As part of religious education study children visit religious places of worship of all religions. This enables them to understand each other’s beliefs and not cause offence because of ignorance. Parents are encouraged to allow children to participate in all visits as these foster mutual understanding and respect. Parents have a right to withdraw their children from collective worship and religious studies.

At Allenby, we follow the National Curriculum. Great emphasis is laid on the teaching of English throughout the school not only through literacy lessons, but within all areas of the curriculum. We promote high standards of literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the written and spoken word and develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

All staff at Allenby endeavour to foster in the children a love of reading and books. As a school we provide various opportunities to read from a range of sources and to a range of people – both at school and at home. These include guided reading groups, 1:1 reading support, a class library of books and access to online books in KS1 and KS2.

hildren learn to write as they learn to read gradually developing accurate spelling, neatly formed handwriting and an extensive vocabulary bank. At all stages in their learning they extend their ability to express their thoughts in written form. These include stories, descriptions, autobiographies, biographies, reports, poems, letters, play scripts etc. Simultaneously, they are also developing their spelling, punctuation and grammar.

At Allenby, children in Reception and Key Stage 1 follow the synthetic phonics approach at Allenby we use the” Read, Write Inc.” Phonics programme written by Ruth Miskin. We are dedicated to ensuring that each and every one of our children learn to read with accuracy and confidence. We believe that the Read, Write Inc. programme will allow us to do this, as well as allowing us to support you in fostering a love of reading in your child that will last a lifetime!

At the core of the programme is the lively and vigorous teaching of synthetic phonics. Children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and how to sound-blend words for reading (decoding) at the same time as developing handwriting skills and spelling (encoding). As their confidence in decoding develops they are taught to comprehend and compose ideas for their own writing. The children have the pleasure of reading exciting storybooks perfectly matched to their level – so that they have early success in reading!