Our School Priorities

Our school priorities support us in our continued drive for improvement and form our school development plan each year. As a school community, we implement and embed these school priorities across each half-term.

This year our school priorities are:

Priority 1: Educational Excellence: Attainment & Ambition

Raise academic aspirations and achievement across all subjects by fostering critical thinking and increasing Greater Depth attainment. Ensure every child achieves fundamental skills in reading, writing, and maths to exceed national benchmarks, using high-quality, adaptive teaching that removes learning barriers for SEND and disadvantaged pupils.

• How we achieve this: We integrate targeted daily classroom strategies for our Focus Five cohort, providing immediate live marking, rapid verbal feedback, and advanced scaffolding so all pupils can access our ambitious curriculum. We explicitly teach cognitive strategies and embed critical thinking tools—such as Why-Why-Why Chains to identify root causes and Preferable & Probable Futures to explore long-term consequences—to foster independence and push pupils toward Greater Depth.

Priority 2: Collective Impact: Empowering Leaders at Every Level

Build a shared culture of ambition by empowering leaders at every level to act as a collaborative alliance for excellence. Through targeted subject leader development and a sustained environment of coaching and mentoring, we will deliver excellence for all.

• How we achieve this: We foster a habituated culture of professional learning and trust-based accountability through our StepLab instructional coaching cycles, ensuring that teachers and support staff engage in regular classroom drop-ins and daily practice conversations. We empower our subject and phase leaders to take full ownership of their curriculum areas, utilising a robust termly monitoring calendar of joint book looks and learning walks to drive academic excellence.

Priority 3: Community Engagement: Relational Partnership

Work collaboratively with parents as co-educators and local community council members to build a community that deeply values education and raises aspirations for every child. By taking shared responsibility for learning both at school and at home, we will ensure every child succeeds, targeting statutory attendance over 95% and bringing persistent absence below 10% to lay the foundations of academic success.

• How we achieve this: We work in deep relational partnership with our families, treating parents and carers as true partners through our Parent workshops and weekly Parent Café sessions. We manage a robust Tiered Attendance Intervention System and run our high-profile Every Day Counts campaign to proactively eliminate barriers to attendance. Additionally, we work closely with the Local Community Council and our Parent Teacher Association (PTA) to connect local expertise to our classrooms.

Priority 4: Securing Strong Foundations: Early Excellence

Secure the foundations for effective learning by embedding a language-rich EYFS and Key Stage 1 curriculum that prioritises oracy and language development. Close attainment gaps for our most vulnerable and disadvantaged children through a rigorous approach to phonics and by establishing 'Every Day Counts' attendance habits from the point of entry.

• How we achieve this: We focus relentlessly on communication, early reading, and mathematical fluency in our Early Years and Key Stage 1 settings. By delivering systematic Little Wandle phonics with immediate daily Keep-Up interventions, we ensure our youngest learners build secure decoding and fluency skills. We design learning environments that prioritise language and oracy using our structured Oracy Framework, while establishing exceptional attendance and learning habits from day one.