VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
View from the classroom I
n this month’s View from the classroom,
we speak to Ann Campling, Headteacher at Wickhambreaux Primary School, to find out more about her ongoing mission to raise standards at the school, and to discover how, through the school’s partnership with science lesson provider Empiribox as an Empiribox Beacon School, she and her staff are inculcating a love of science in the pupils and “nurturing the scientists of tomorrow”.
Tell us about your school Wickhambreaux is a small school with just 129 pupils in four classes. Ofsted graded the school as outstanding in 2008 and again in 2015 with three consecutive outstanding church inspections. In 2015 Ofsted commented, 'Staff know each pupil as an individual and carefully plan to meet their needs.' Although we are a small school, we are part of the Canterbury Collaboration of nine local schools
and have close links with the independent sector through our link with King’s School, Canterbury. We also take pride in our specialist teaching in music, French, science and mathematics.
What challenges did you face? Science has always played a key role in our efforts to ensure we offer a stimulating curriculum. Unlike many primary schools, we are exceptionally lucky that we currently have two teachers who have degrees in science, but we were also aware that other staff did not have the background knowledge to answer the difficult science questions posed by children, especially those more able pupils. We wanted to save time on planning so that
there could be more of a focus on practical work ensuring that our children were engaged and learning science skills which would prepare them for secondary school. We ideally wanted additional science
equipment to teach a lively hands-on science curriculum and that is a challenge for a small school with a restricted budget. We felt we had made our science lessons as exciting as possible but for big impressive experiments more sophisticated kit was required.
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www.education-today.co.uk May 2018
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