Welcome from the Head Teacher
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our school website. Choosing your child’s school is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. At Tow Law Millennium Primary School our staff team, in partnership with the Governing Body, strive to provide the very best opportunities and experiences for children and by looking through our website, I hope to give you an insight into the wonderful opportunities and developments we have to offer. TLMPS is a vibrant school where children are enthusiastic and motivated to achieve and they are truly at the heart of every decision we make.
We were most recently inspected by Claire Brown, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors, on 3rd October 2017 and judged to continue to be a “Good” school. Her report highlighted the good work of the Leadership Team ensuring that pupils continue to benefit from a good standard of education and also noted the higher than average proportion of Y6 pupils who leave the school well prepared for their secondary school education.
She recognised that pupils demonstrate excellent attitudes to learning. They are polite, considerate of others and behave very well around school. She commented that leaders’ work to instil pupils with a good understanding of the values which are fundamental in modern Britain has been particularly successful. Pupils recognise their responsibility to, as they stated, ‘use their voice’. They take pride in the democratic processes in place in school to elect School Councillors and ‘Buddies’ and make good use of the “Suggestions Box”. We are proud to say our pupils show respect for, and tolerance of, others, recognising that ‘it doesn’t matter what skin colour you have, or what religion you believe in – what matters is the person you are’. Consequently, she concluded that this is a happy community, where pupils feel safe and nurtured by everyone around them.
Parents were full of praise for the school, citing the approachability of leaders and the willingness of all staff to ‘bend over backwards’ to help and support pupils. I would like to thank all those parents who took the time to take part in the inspection survey and for your passionate support of our school.
At the start of the new academic year we received a letter of congratulations from Julien Kramer, Head of Education and Skills for Children and Young Peoples services in County Durham, I have copied an extract from it below:
‘Achieving a Good judgement for the overall effectiveness of provision, under the current Ofsted framework, is a clear endorsement of the commitment and hard work of everyone connected with the school. It is a judgement of which everyone can feel justifiably very proud. Good schools receive this judgement because leaders and governors know their school well and take effective action to secure continuous improvements in teaching and learning…….I am delighted that Ofsted recognises the many strengths that underpin the work of your school and the strong capacity of leaders to build further upon current success. It is a great credit to everyone connected with your school that the children attending Tow Law Millennium Primary benefit from a good quality education.’
Well, as you can imagine, we are very pleased to receive such high praise!
Investing in Children, Young Carers’ Charter, working with the eXtreme Group (Investing in Children) to improve accessibility, Sainsbury’s Gold Mark for PE as well as achieving the Physical Education and Sport Quality Mark with Distinction are but a few of our achievements on our journey from 2015 – 2018.
We have outstanding School Councillors and Buddies and a strong staff team who have steered our children through life without levels into a new and exciting National Curriculum.
We pride ourselves in working together with the community. We are an integral part of the town and as such strive towards providing a high quality learning environment for all our children. In February 2012, we opened a 16 place (8 morning and 8 afternoon) nursery in our existing Reception classroom which, in September 2017, was extended to enable us to offer 32 places (16 morning and 16 afternoon) and cater for the new Government initiative offering 30 hours of free childcare per week. This is available for parents of three and four year olds, to help them continue or take up employment.
Our Early Years facilities offer high quality provision in a respectful and caring environment. We recognise and celebrate that all children are individuals and as such develop at different rates, have different interests and come from varied cultural backgrounds. We strive to ensure our provision reflects and supports all children, both indoors and outdoors.
We have always had a good relationship with the two local childminders and together recently looked at the facilities in and around Tow Law. We all recognised that these are limited, especially when you look at SAFE areas for our very youngest residents to play. Therefore, during the school holidays, we are now opening the school to allow the childminders to bring their children to TLMPS to access our facilities.
Miss Dobson and I were very proud of our KS1 pupils last year. Their class grew from 14 in September to 22 by July, and provided a happy, stimulating place to learn and play.
In May 2018, our Year 6 pupils took their end of KS2 SATs. They worked hard and Miss Mawson and I were very proud of their results. Our current Year 6 are working extremely hard and reaping the rewards of their positive attitude towards all aspects of education.
Governors have had another very pro-active year starting with the remodelling of the Early Years’ environment, preparing the school to meet the demand, for those parents eligible, for 30 hours nursery provision and reacting to the results of our summer term surveys for pupils, parents and staff.
We have listened to the views of parents regarding the gate to the yard beside my office which has been fitted with a stop plate as well as allocating £1,000 to extending the reading book provision within the school.
During the last academic year, we worked with Chris Cook, Olympic swimmer, through the “Inspire Programme”. The focus, as you can guess, was to inspire our pupils through believing in themselves. We recognise the importance of exercise and a healthy lifestyle for our pupils and have prioritised employing a Sports Apprentice to support the provision of sport across the school day and within after school clubs.
Finally, my thanks go to the whole school staff for all their hard work and commitment to our school as well as the following:
- Our children/parents/carers
- Tesco’s
- The Pantry
- Councillor Manchester
- Parents’ Group
- All the shops/businesses in Tow Law
- The Town Council
- School Governors
Lisa Jackson (Head Teacher)
