Ashmead Primary School

Ashmead Primary School is a one form entry school with space for 30 children per year group and 50 part-time nursery children. At the moment we have additional (or “bulge”) classes in Years Four and Six.

The school aims to provide a safe, caring and stimulating environment in which all pupils have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and to become actively involved in their learning. The new building, opened in November 2008, is a key element in this. The school encourages care and respect for one another, valuing the diverse needs and backgrounds found within our school community. The ethos of the School is very open and friendly. Parents and carers are highly valued, and the PTA of Ashmead provide a very active and strong support for the School. Our curriculum is supported by a wide range of extra curricular opportunities, visits for all classes throughout the school year and residential experiences for children in Years Four and Six.

At Ashmead we have identified 12 key values and we are focusing on two of these every half term. They are: respect, perseverance, kindness, cooperation, reflection, hope, courage, responsibility, empathy, confidence, integrity and freedom.

Safeguarding is the most important aspect of school life. It sits behind and runs through everything that we do.Our current safeguarding policy is here:Ashmead Primary School Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy Nov 2016.

Every year we brief parents during the Meet the Teacher meetings for each class on key safeguarding issues. This is what we talk about with parents:“Safeguarding” is the phrase we use to describe all the different ways we keep your children emotionally and physically safe. Nothing is more important to us. This includes things like risk assessing our trips, doing fire drills, making our entrance more secure, training first aiders, talking to children about how to keep themselves safe online, about what to do if they feel someone is being unkind or is bullying them or someone else.

It also means that we have a legal duty regarding child protection to seek advice or report any concerns we have over children being neglected or hurt. This sometimes means talking to other agencies. When we do this our intention is always to protect your child. The advice we get – and we’ve recently all had child protection training – is to ‘think the unthinkable’ and that it is better to be safe than sorry. Usually we will bring concerns to you directly but there are times when we can’t do that and that can sometimes lead to families feeling upset. This is understandable but I hope parents will understand that we are always doing what we think is best for the child.