North West London

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice

real desire to show respect in all ways between children and adults, known as “four-way respect”. Progress Parent, pupil and staff surveys have shown a huge improvement. Just as significantly, the informal day-to-day feedback showed all stakeholders were believing in the school again, also reinforced in the recent Ofsted report through “Parentview”. This wasn’t a school where achievement was particularly low; there were some key areas that needed targeting and improving. Teachers can now begin to look to take risks with their teaching, try different approaches and learn from their mistakes. Our focus and investment in English and maths was of significant value as we started our review of the foundation subjects. We have already seen a huge range of activities introduced in the wider curriculum: chamber choir, running club before school from year 2 up, “inspire” days within our PE premium that lead to after-school clubs, wind band, chess club, karate, lacrosse and guitar ensemble. I have set out to practise what I preach. It’s okay to make mistakes, but we will learn from them. I visited at least six other schools in a year and took two valuable pieces of information away from each of them, leading to significant school improvement within Allfarthing. My key phrase has been “consistency, consistency, consistency”, and this open continuum is one to always improve within schools. We are now far better placed to meet the needs of our local community and to give our children the best education possible: something the whole school community should be proud of.

Children enjoying each other’s company in the playground

school to work in for teachers and an appealing school to prospective and current parents and children. We reviewed the marking and needed to be sure that it has purpose and effect, considering the teachers workload. We now have a clear balance between light and heavy touch marking and a greater impact on children’s learning through discussion. there is a purpose for the children. The children have moments of reflection in assemblies, the therapeutic service Place 2BE has been reviewed and we look to get what works for us from our investment. We introduced a concrete behaviour management system and equally the children needed positive reward; houses were introduced after half a term. This brought a sense of personal and collective gain that, in turn, has generated collaboration and togetherness. Local road names were chosen as the theme by our school council; four names were chosen from a longlist of 20 following a vote throughout the school. We focused on our school values with a We don’t do things because we’ve been told to; we do them because

“

Houses were introduced after half a

term. This brought a sense of

personal and collective gain that, in turn, has generated collaboration and togetherness

“

36 | ALLFARTHING PRIMARY SCHOOL