Positive Contribution &
Economic Well Being

Relationships

The school  and parents work closely together to ensure that as a school we can provide the best possible education for their children.

To ensure that as a school we develop this relationship, we place parental views at the heart of our school development plans.

We audit the views of parents, children, governors and staff on a three year improvement cycle. These views are audited by an independent organisation, to ensure impartiality, and detailed analysis of all stakeholders opinions. This then creates a three year school improvement plan, that is broken down into yearly cycles.

By valuing the views of all people involved in the school, we ensure that the school developments impact upon everyone,  and that the school really does reflect the school community.

The head teacher and teachers are on the yard before and after school to ensure that communication between home and school is optimised, and that the children are very aware that teachers and parents do talk to each other. This communication is an expectation of our parents.

Extended schools – Before school breakfast club and After school clubs, provide parents with choices to support them with child care in an extended school day.

Enterprise

The children are encouraged to have high aspirations for themselves as learners.

They understand their individual targets and work hard to achieve them.

One of our Super Learning Weeks, centres upon aspirations. This week involves people who work in our community and further afield, coming into school to talk to the children about their career, what it means to them and how they came to have the job.

We hold competitions inside school, and also take part in national awards and competitions.

The school has achieved many awards over the last two years;

Basic Skills Quality Mark for schools, Inclusion standard, Healthy Schools Award, International Schools Award, Global School , Eco School.

By working together as a school, we model setting high targets, having clear goals and aspirations. By working together, we have also been able to model the successes that can be achieved. The Head teacher’s nomination as Primary School Head teacher of the Year 2007, and her subsequent award of a Head teacher’s Distinction for the North West Region.

We also link with other schools across the world; Canada, St Lucia, France, Holland, to widen the children’s perspective to see themselves as global citizens.

Further Education / Employment Opportunities

To support our children in transition to high school, we have made links with North Manchester High School for Boys ,  North Manchester High School for Girls, St Matthews High School and Trinity High School.

Teachers from the high schools come into St Wilfrids to create smoother transition for the pupils and also to highlight their subject as it is taught in Key stage 3. This also helps the high schools to familiarise themselves with the curriculum taught at Key stage 2.

High school teachers have taught ; Gifted and Talented Maths, Art, Modern Foreign Languages (French), Drama, P.E. and ICT.

The school works hard to ensure that through precise paperwork, detailed assessments, and tracking, we are able to ensure that as the children leave school to progress onto high school, their learning is as uninterrupted as possible, and that all of their individual needs are understood by the high schools.

Through enriching the curriculum, the children experience modern foreign languages as part of their curriculum. As recognition of the good work that has gone on in this area, the school has become a global school, with lasses linked to schools around the world, and has been awarded International School status.

Led by the excellent  Assistant Head teacher, the school is developing an Upper School in years 5 and 6. The children in these year groups have designed their own uniforms- black sweatshirt and trousers / skirt, with a red school logo, and a white T.shirt.

The high schools are very interested in this approach to the upper school curriculum, which it is felt will engage the children in their learning, and link into the high school competence based curriculum.

These classes work on a competence based curriculum in which the afternoon work is topic led, and the curriculum enriched through a diverse approach to learning. The topic for this half term is the Fairground.  Within this topic the children have for example studied motion, forces, electricity, sound, light. They have designed  and made fairground rides in technology. In ICT they have created Powerpoint  presentations, posters using ICT. They have through extended ICT created animations about the funfair.

The topic also enriched the whole learning environment with reading areas becoming Haunted Houses and Maths problem solving questions on the bottom of Hook a duck games!

Community

The school council has developed children’s voice within school.

They work alongside Playground Pals who help children during playtimes.

The children also participate through school in community events. They participate in Newton Heath in Bloom, planting flower beds outside local libraries and in residential areas.

We link with the three other local schools in an Extended Schools cluster, helping to ensure that we can across this cluster provide or direct children to extended school services.

At Christmas, children also visit the local residential home for the elderly  singing to them, and the children from school have named two wards at the home.

We have growing links with All Saints Church, and every half term three classes attend service at the church.

Father Ken is also part of St Wilfrid’s Governing body, and is involved in all of the school developments.

St Wilfrid’s also provides a room for a Community Playgroup daily, and we run a Mums and Tots session once a week. We are developing this provision through working with Extended  school services and the LEA to provide planned extended facilities within the old caretakers bungalow on school grounds.