Heathmere Primary School

It gives us great pleasure to introduce the children, staff and governors of Heathmere Primary School. Ofsted rated our school as GOOD in November 2014. We are immensely proud of our school and our children.

At Heathmere, we set high standards for our children and we want them - by the time they reach year 6 - to be ready for secondary school. Our school values of Respect, Resilience and High Expectations underpin everything that we do – we believe these are values that will help children through their school years and also throughout their adult life. Take a moment to look at our vision and mission statement.

Learning is at the centre of everything we do at Heathmere – we believe children should be ‘Always Learning’. We focus clearly on developing children’s skills and understanding in reading, writing and maths. Children are expected to read widely. We have a well-stocked library, engaging book corners and even a little library in our playground. Maths is taught every day in the morning and children also develop their skills in the afternoon in a whole class ‘maths meeting’. Writing is taught using high-quality books, including picture books.

We also pride ourselves on our wider curriculum which includes lots of exciting opportunities to learn both inside and outside the classroom. We have lots of interesting trips, workshops and, this year, we even have our own Artist in Residence and Author in Residence working across the school. The school also benefits from large grounds and lots of space to play and learn. We have recently refurbished the outdoor space in our Early Years and the children are now able to enjoy a new playground in Key Stage One.

We expect all our children to achieve and to become the very best that they can be and this vision will drive us as we aim to keep improving our school. Our children have the greatest chance of succeeding if parents and school work together in partnership and we pride ourselves on being a friendly, open and listening school. As a school, we are committed to inclusion. Safeguarding children and ensuring their welfare is a priority for us and we will work with parents to make sure all our children are safe.

Our vision is a school where all members of the school community work together so that children learn and achieve their full potential in a calm, safe and caring environment.
Our mission is to:

• Establish a purposeful learning environment based on our school values of respect, resilience and high expectations, and by developing Heathmere as a Rights Respecting School.
• Teach an interesting, creative and stimulating curriculum which engages and enthuses children and prepares them for a life of learning.
• Be at the heart of the local community by involving parents, carers and the wider community in the school.
• Continually improve by learning from each other, reflecting on what we do and being open to change and to new ideas.
• Enable children to become active members of society who have high expectations for themselves and who are able to collaborate with other children and adults.

At Heathmere, we have put together exciting plans for the new curriculum. This is based around topics and, wherever possible, links are made between different subjects, such as geography, art, history, design technology, computing or science, and the main topic.

Children have a daily maths and literacy lesson, as well as sessions focussing on phonics, guided reading and 'SPAG'(spelling, punctuation and grammar). We also include lots of opportunities for children to use and apply their writing skills, so they are writing as part of their learning in different topics and not just in literacy lessons. More information about maths, literacy and reading can be found by clicking on the links (or visit the 'Our School' section).

Each topic is designed to be interesting and engaging - as well as teaching subject knowledge and skills, we have also planned various opportunities to help our topics 'come alive' (we call these a 'stunning start', a 'marvellous middle' and a 'fantastic finish'). This could be through a drama workshop, a trip or 'theme day' in school. We also seek to involve parents in each topic, either by involving them in a lesson or inviting parents to and end of topic display of learning. Throughout the year, we also organise enrichment days or weeks, such as Art Week, Science Week, International Week or DT day.