Our Lady of Good Help Catholic Primary School

Welcome to Our Lady of Good Help Catholic Primary School. Our school is a small and friendly one-form entry Catholic primary school situated in the heart of Wavertree, a suburb of Liverpool, and we can track our heritage back over 100 years.

Our vision for Our Lady of Good Help is ‘academic and personal excellence for all’: We strive to provide a truly inclusive curriculum within a calm, positive, happy and nurturing environment that excites all children, encapsulates their natural curiosity, celebrates their achievements and is based on children knowing more as well as being able to do more. With the help of our expert team, every child must have the opportunity to achieve their full potential, be afforded new experiences, learn new skills, develop new talents and be recognised for their individual uniqueness. The promotion of the ‘Gospel Values’ will cultivate an environment full of love, respect, compassion and aspiration for all. We want our children to show confidence, resilience and commitment in all they do

We are proud of our children who are eager to learn and our staff, who put care and thought into everything that they do, to help our pupils be the best they can be and who ensure that each of our children receives an education that meets their individual strengths and needs. Children are able to join our school from the start of the term after their fourth birthday, when they enter our newly developed Reception class which is light and airy, with access to the outdoors.

Children then move through the school into Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, where they will enjoy a rich and engaging curriculum that provides every child with a real love of learning. Children also have the chance to enjoy a wide range of visits to different places – ranging from Acorn Farm to Liverpool’s museums, and including a residential trip in Year 6. We also run lots of after-school clubs, including art, football, choir and lacrosse.

We have excellent links with our local church, Christ the King and Our Lady, and celebrate mass every month in our school hall.

Children regularly join our school mid-year when moving into the area, and we have spaces in most of our classes for such mid-year transfers. We are a very warm and friendly school, and because of this we always find that children settle in quickly and are very soon part of the Our Lady of Good Help family.

Our Lady of Good Help Catholic Primary School sets out to develop confident, caring, inquiring individuals prepared for the future. This vision should be achieved through equality of opportunity, through everyone realising their full potential in a purposeful and happy environment that offers varied, relevant, interesting experiences, and by pursuing excellence at all levels and in all spheres. As such we proclaim certain values to be the cornerstones to the educational opportunities that we deliver.

The goal of our Catholic education at Our Lady of Good Help is to live wisely, think deeply and love generously in Christ. Through doing this we aim that each person reaches their full potential. Our Catholic values underpin every aspect of our curriculum that promotes: equality, freedom, respect, tolerance, forgiveness and democracy.

Our curriculum is designed to offer our children a broad and balanced curriculum. Our curriculum adds richness and enjoyment to our pupils’ learning, fostering their interest in the wider-world, its processes and history, its people and their societies; in the arts and culture; in computing and the digital world; and in sports and healthy lifestyles. In all these it promotes values necessary to live in our society today. We deliver the National Curriculum in a way which is appropriate to our city, our area and our school. It is a curriculum that sets in place firm foundations to promote life-long learning and develops self- esteem of the children.

The Foundation Stage covers the development of children from the age of three to the end of the reception year. It recognises that early childhood is an important stage of life and has its own particular needs.

The Foundation Stage acknowledges the many valuable skills children have developed and the importance of the role that parents play in this. Children learn best from first-hand experience and learning is inter-related to help children to achieve to their full potential.

We have developed a topic based curriculum. Subjects covered within these topics in Key-Stage 1 (5-7) and Keystage 2 (7-11) are: English, Maths, Science, Art and Design, Computing, Design and Technology, Geography, History, Music and P.E. Keystage 2 children also learn Spanish.

The school teaches phonics using the Letters and Sounds scheme. The reading scheme followed by the school is ‘Oxford Reading Tree’ This includes: Songbirds, Glow-worms, Snapdragons, Stories, Phonics, Fireflies, Treetops, Poetry. This is supplemented by Pearson’s Phonics Bug Reading Policy 2016.