North West London

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice

Lordship Lane Primary School

Lordship Lane Choir prepare for their performance at the Royal Albert Hall L ordship Lane is a large primary school of over 650 children, based in Wood Green, London. It’s also an exceptionally multicultural community school with over 70 different languages spoken. When starting as head teacher of Lordship Lane Primary in September 2015, Michelle Bates brought with her the belief that children should be at the centre of everything that is done in a school. Working together, the major stakeholders came up with values that truly meant something to them as a community. Here, she discusses what this meant in practice. Propriety and autonomy With staff, children, governors and parents, we discussed the values we would like our children to have, in order to help prepare them for their futures. Ambition, perseverance, respect, creativity and the ability to be independent learners were the values that we as a community held dear. Part of this involves having pride in our multicultural community and ensuring we celebrate all faiths and religions throughout the year; we throw Eid class parties as well as Christmas ones. We also celebrate Easter, Diwali, Hanukkah and Rosh Hashana. Because we faced many challenges relating to housing, social mobility and mental health difficulties, I felt it was of monumental importance to ensure school life was as stable and secure as I could make it for the children and that school was a celebration of all their skills. Ensuring we adhered to our values, I tackled behaviour first, in the belief that good behaviour for learning was paramount to success. The approach that I introduced to staff and children was that of restorative justice. All staff were trained in

Head girl and head boy with head teacher Michelle Bates

REPORT CARD LORDSHIP LANE PRIMARY SCHOOL » » Head teacher: Michelle Bates » » Founded in 1905 » » Based in Wood Green, Haringey » » Type of school: Community primary school » » No. of pupils: 650 » » www.lordshiplaneprimary.co.uk

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