Broad Oak Primary School

Our motto ‘Exciting Minds’ succinctly outlines our commitment to provide engaging and memorable learning experiences that foster a love of learning and allow our pupils to reach their full potential.

We have over 500 children in school, including a 50 place Nursery. We are very fortunate to have children from a diverse cultural background with families joining us from countries such as Pakistan, Portugal, Brazil and Egypt. Some of our children speak very little English at first but within weeks their confidence grows and their language develops. We love to learn about each others countries and customs. There are many opportunities for children, parents, governors and staff to be an integral part of the shaping of our school community. We strongly believe that education is a partnership between home and school.

We believe that children learn best when home and school work together for their benefit, and so we will strive to involve families and encourage you to share your child’s learning journey. Children coming into the school bring a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the world around them. It is our aim to build on these skills and promote a willingness and enthusiasm to learn more.

Broad Oak Primary School provides the very best educational experience. We are ambitious for all our pupils to make the most of their talents academically and socially. We have a dynamic and motivating curriculum to enthuse everyone. Staff love working here because they are valued and supported to try new things. We value and make the best use of our assets – our rich cultural diversity, our local community, our partnerships with other like-minded schools, our new buildings our extensive grounds - yet still being part of a major city.

The structure of the GB is designed to fit in with and hence be able to contribute to Broad Oak's school development programme.The GB sees governance as being part of a team of pupils, parents and carers, staff and governors who's sole focus is on raising the quality of what is offered to our children. Yes, it would be good if this focus were to result in an outstanding Ofsted judgement, but all at the school believe that the quality of our children's school experience is the driving force for our work. In our last Ofsted one of their findings was that "this is a happy school where children thrive and parents (and carers) feel welcome".Thriving means, not only, doing well in exams, but also, that our children feel, and are, safe, they are free from pressure including bullying and that they all feel able to progress at the fastest rate of which they are capable, across all aspects of their development.

The school has invested in a quality assurance programme called Aspire, a programme of activities that looks at what the school is offering, plans ways to develop that offer and then undertakes a rigorous programme of monitoring with outside experts coming in to moderate the work of the school leadership team thus ensuring that the school does not become complacent and continues to move forward at a pace that will positively influence the life chances of all the pupils of Broad Oak Primary School. Our duty as Governors is to ensure that this process works well and to the benefit of our children and as such we operate two ways.

The Acorn class children have settled into their classroom and have built up safe relationships with the Acorn staff members. The designated teaching space for seven pupils has been designed to meet the needs of our students, to ensure that they feel comfortable and safe in their environemnt.

Acorn class is made up of one main teaching space, two break-out spaces where we can deliver specialist interventions and an Acorn playground. We acknowledge that at different times, social and emotional factors can impact on our pupils' learning potential. The interventions that we can provide through Therapeutic Inclusion for individuals and small groups can really unlock a child's potential.

For the second year Broad Oak, in conjunction with Living Streets, are operating the WOW scheme.WOW stands for 'Walk Once A Week'. Children who walk at least once a week will earn badges for each month of the school year. Cycling, scooting, and using public transport all count and those children who travel by car can also earn badges by parking at Didsbury Tennis Club and walking from there (known as park and stride).

Here at Broad Oak we are very proud of our pupil’s handwriting and take particular care in our cursive/ joined up handwriting style. We use Letter join as the basis of our handwriting policy that covers all the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum.

Handwriting is a basic skill that influences the quality of work throughout the curriculum. At the end of Key Stage 2 all pupils should have the ability to produce fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy joined up handwriting, and to understand the different forms of handwriting used for differentWe aim to make handwriting an automatic process that does not interfere with creative and mental thinking.As a catalyst to speedy handwriting we encourage parents and carers to use the Letter join resources at home and can arrange for free access to the Home/ School Account of Letter join.