Montem Primary School

Montem is a vibrant inner-city school. We aim to nurture and inspire our learners to become motivated and successful citizens who are equipped to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. We do this by creating a positive, stimulating environment that promotes the development of children’s academic, social, moral, spiritual and physical learning.

Montem School is a two form entry Primary School catering for children from 2 to 11. There are 14 classes with 30 children per class and a 52 place Nursery. The classes are organised into age groups with two classes in each year group from Reception through to Year 6.

Our school motto is ‘Together We Learn’. Because learning is at the heart of everything we do. We provide a rich and varied curriculum that enables everyone to succeed. We have high expectations of our children and provide lots of support to help them achieve. We believe everyone should enjoy school and we plan lots of exciting activities to make learning fun. Our school values – Cooperation, Honesty, Peace, Love and Respect – are very important to us. Children learn about these values and are expected to support them. We expect children to treat one and other in a friendly and fair manner. If bullying occurs we will deal with it as quickly as possible and with the cooperation of parents.

We aim to provide an environment where children feel safe, secure and happy. Children learn best when school and parents work together. We work in partnership with parents and carers to support children and are always happy to meet with parents and carers to discuss children’s progress. It is the responsibility of the whole school community to ensure that every child feels cared for and safe in our school. We take seriously our responsibility to protect and keep children in our care safe.

At Montem School we provide a curriculum that is rich and varied that enables everyone to succeed. We want everyone to enjoy school and plan lots of exciting activities to engage children with learning.

In addition to a daily English lesson, reading is taught every day throughout the school and phonics happens every day in the lower part of the school.

Starting in the nursery, all children learn phonics as a key tool for learning to read. We, like many schools, follow the Letters and Sounds scheme.

We select texts very carefully to engage children as readers and expose them to a broad range of books. We use a combination of modern and classic texts including texts that reflect our school community.

Reading for pleasure is a high priority. Children borrow books from our well-stocked library and benefit from support from our Reading Champion.

As children progress through the school, they are introduced to different books based on their reading skills. This depends on the child’s ability to decode the words and understand the contents. Please click here for more information about the different 'Book Bands' used to assess children’s reading and how best to support your child reading at a particular band.

All our children write every day, in English lessons and throughout the curriculum. Children are taught to write for a range of purposes and in a range of contexts – some real and some imaginary.

Daily maths lessons ensure children develop key mathematical skills. Our curriculum strongly emphasises arithmetic as this is fundamental to all mathematical understanding. Problem solving enables children to apply mathematical understanding in a range of contexts thereby deepening understanding.

Science lessons emphasise a ’hands-on’ approach to learning. Children develop knowledge and understanding through investigations and experiments. As children progress through the school their investigative and scientific skills are developed through a range of focused units.

At Montem we are able to support children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in many different ways. Throughout school life a child may have some difficulties academically, socially or emotionally. We have facilities for certain kinds of extra help for children in the school. If these are not sufficient we can call in outside help such as the Educational Psychologist, School Health Visitor or specialist teachers.