Malmesbury Primary School

Malmesbury is a special place where children enjoy learning and playing together – staff, parents and especially our children tell us so.We have great facilities, including a well-maintained building with specialist rooms for teaching whole classes and small groups, a modern library that is open to parents, carers and children after school, a well-equipped Early Years base and extensive grounds for sport and play.Our specialist teachers provide high quality lessons in French, Music and PE; supporting our strong and successful musical and sporting traditions, with participation and success in competitions at local, Borough, and London-wide events, and our participation in national language challenges. We provide support and challenge for all so that we live up to our school ethos that Malmesbury ‘brings out the best in everyone’.

Our Children’s Council, led by our Year 6 children, allows every child in the school to have a voice which is respected and valued. We are valued participants in the national Shakespeare Schools Festival, and perform at professional theatres each year. We also take part in Enabling Enterprise, building the skills of team working, problem solving and leadership. This includes visits to businesses across London which allow children to learn about the world of work and start to think about their own aspirations for the future.

Malmesbury Primary School is a two form entry community school. A total of 60 places are available in each year group, with an additional 104 places provided in the Nursery.

At Malmesbury we have developed a creative, topic based approach to the curriculum which encourages our children to have high aspirations and to strive for the best. Whilst we follow the objectives set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage document and the National Curriculum, we have a bespoke curriculum to ensure the needs of our children and families are met. Our curriculum is bound together by the school ethos and British values and “Brings out the best in everyone”.

Our creative curriculum is inclusive and relevant to all children using high quality texts at its core taken from The Power of Reading programme. Texts are selected so that children can make connections across all areas of their learning. The curriculum is planned systematically through curriculum maps for each for each year group to ensure the whole range of objectives are delivered appropriately and allows for progression and challenge as the children build on their skills each year.

We have a number of specialist teachers and teaching assistants at Malmesbury who not only support our children’s learning in English and maths but also ensure we deliver a broad curriculum. We have a music teacher, a modern foreign languages (MFL) teacher and a PE teacher whose expertise ensure our children have a wide learning experience. We also invest in organisation such as Enabling Enterprise, Artis and Merton Music Foundation to deepen our creative curriculum

At Malmesbury, we are committed to ensuring that all children make good progress in school and that a great many children make more than expected progress.

Teachers make judgements on children's attainment on a termly basis using information they have collected during the term. This information includes evidence in books, classroom observations, work completed during guided and small group sessions, discussions with Teaching Assistants and use of formative assessment results. We believe it is very important to use a range of sources to inform attainment judgements to ensure a whole picture of each child is considered.

Progress meetings are held termly with the class teacher and senior leaders to monitor each child. By tracking the progress of every child we are able to quickly identify children who may benefit from additional help or extra challenge and identify the best way to deliver this.

At Malmesbury Primary School we actively support and uphold British values, which aredemocracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. These principles are woven through our curriculum, are seen in action in our Children's Council and school rules, and are taught in PSHE lessons and in Assemblies.We are exploring what the values mean in practice, through our assembly programme.

We are an Enabling Enterprise partnership school. Through this we hope to develop the enterprise skills and experiences of work and aspirations to succeed.We work in partnership with schools and businesses such as Metro Bank, IBM, BT, Hamleys, Virgin Active and The London Business School. Enterprise is now a core part of the school experience through special projects, trips and Challenge days.

We expect all children to read at home each day as this supports their progress and achievement across all areas of the curriculum. In addition to the books they choose from the class libraries, children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 have access to ebooks on Bug Club. Once children are in Key Stage 2, they are expected to become more independent in their reading. They use Accelerated Reader which involves reading books and taking quizzes that check their comprehension.Children in Key Stage 1 are encouraged to be Maths Magicians, securing their recall of addition and subtraction facts. As they move into Key Stage 2 they can become Times Table Superstars through rapid recall of multiplication and division facts. Regular practice at home is key to their success in learning these number facts.