Michael Faraday School

Welcome to our school. We aim to provide all our children with a first-class education and we want them to enjoy and love learning.

Starting school is a very important time for children and parents. A happy and successful school life plays an important part in a child’s development into an independent and autonomous adult equipped with all the skills and understanding needed to become confident and competent adults.

Michael Faraday is a Primary school situated on the Aylesbury Estate in the heart of Walworth, SE17. It is a mixed school with over 420 pupils, ranging from 3-11 years. The school is named after the famous chemist and physicist Michael Faraday who was born in this area. We have two classes per year group from nursery to Year 6.

Our school community prides itself on its ethos of treating others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We teach the pupils to be proud of themselves and their school community. As well as academic achievement the school aims to give the children a sense of social responsibility and respect for others.

We work with parents to create an environment where everyone feels safe, cared for and supported. We have established a school culture based on mutual respect, where children work and play co-operatively.

The school believes in developing confident children with lively, enquiring minds. We want to establish common expectations about the way children behave within our community. Our aim is to encourage all children to achieve their personal best in all areas of school life.

Our commitment to equal opportunities: We encourage everyone to respect and value the rights of others. We consider any behaviour or attitude that threatens these rights as prejudice and we are committed to challenging prejudice wherever it arises.

We do not allow racist name-calling or racial harassment of any kind at this school. We do not want any child or group of children to be made to feel inferior or left out of the life of the school. We want all children in this school to have equal opportunities in their work, their play and relationships, so that they can develop and achieve their full potential.

At Michael Faraday School we follow the National Curriculum 2014 for all our Foundation subjects. We believe that all children have the entitlement to a broad, balanced, creative and coherent curriculum which should prepare them for the opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century. They should be equipped with the skills, attitudes and dispositions they need to become well rounded individuals and life-long learners whilst instilling a love of learning.

In order for children to learn to think for themselves the curriculum should be enquiry based. It is important that children are responsible for their own learning enabling them to plan and show initiative; persevere and have a commitment to self-improvement.

We use a play based interactive approach to deliver the Early Years curriculum which focuses on seven key areas of learning. Our pupils use the indoor classroom and outdoor areas choosing from a range of activities throughout sessions. Reading, writing and maths are taught using a structured approach with whole class and small group adult led activities.

At Michael Faraday we believe reading is the key to all learning. Reading is taught using a structured phonics programme as well as in whole class, small group and individual reading sessions with adults. All pupils use their reading skills across the curriculum to develop their understanding and to promote their enjoyment of reading. We use reading books from a variety of reading schemes including Rigby Stars and Collins. Children use our class book corners, the school library and Newington library to choose reading books and to develop a love of books.

Writing is taught in daily English lessons, with further opportunities in other curriculum areas being provided for pupils to write for ‘real ‘ purposes e.g./ letters, newspaper articles, posters. We use a continuous cursive writing script with pupils from EYFS throughout the school.

Maths is taught in daily maths lessons, with further opportunities to develop skills in other curriculum areas such as Science and Computing. Targeted interventions run daily to ensure all children are making fantastic progress throughout the year.