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.
Investing in Children, Young Carers’ Charter, 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 over the past 3 years.
This year we have been part of two joint ‘Heritage Projects’. Firstly, a creative writing and local heritage project researching the experiences of the men who fell in the Great War 1914-18 as named on our war memorial, as well as studying the impact of the Great War on the Home Front at Tow Law. This was funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund and facilitated through Building Self-Belief ClO. Many thanks to Peter and Christine Thomas for making this project so worthwhile. Our second project called ‘Landscape nature and sheep farming year’ was the result of a lot of hard work by Jenny Mountain, School Governor. Her enthusiasm is to be commended and we look forward to working collaboratively on future projects.
We have outstanding School Councillors, Buddies, Green Leaders 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 have offered to open the school to allow the childminders to bring their children to TLMPS to access our facilities.
Governors have had another very pro-active year revising the accessibility plan and planning a 3 year programme of work, carrying out a full skills audit and finally, in the summer term, appointing a new Chair of Governors, Lisa Croft, and Vice Chair, Councillor Manchester. At this point, I would like to thank Mr Russell Bell who has been part of our Governing Body since 2005 and Chair for nearly 7 years. During this time, he worked tirelessly for the benefit of the children in the school and we will miss him.
We have listened to the views of parents regarding the congestion going into Early Years on a morning and reviewed access into school for September as well as reorganising classes to comply with the legal limit on infant class size, thus ensuring our youngest pupils are taught in smaller classes.
I would like to thank the Town Council for their continued support of our school, The Pantry, Councillor Manchester, all the shops/businesses in Tow Law, the whole school staff for all their hard work and commitment to our school and last, but by no means least, all of our children and parents/carers. We look forward to another successful year working with you.
Lisa Jackson (Head Teacher)
