At Ouston Primary School we strive to create a happy and successful school where everyone is valued, respected and encouraged to achieve their very best. We realise that all children have unique and special qualities and we work in partnership with members of our school community to provide the very best education for our children.
Our school motto is ‘Trying our best and achieving success’ and we encourage our pupils to work towards this in all aspects of school life. As a ‘Rights Respecting School,’ teaching pupils about valuing and respecting others and taking responsibility for their actions are also a major part of our school ethos.
By the time our pupils leave us and go on to secondary school we work to ensure that they are confident, enthusiastic young people who know the value of hard work, are able to achieve success both academically and in extra-curricular areas, can tackle challenges and work together as a team, enjoy their learning and are polite, friendly and respectful towards others.
We aim to provide a curriculum that educates the whole child using a wide range of topics and motivational themes and ensuring a clear progression of learning from Nursery to Year 6. Policies and Subject overviews are available for you to look at in the individual Subject sections on the right hand side of this page and we will review and update these as needed.
Our curriculum has a very strong focus on Reading from Nursery onwards with successful early phonics teaching and the promotion of an enjoyment of books and reading. As they move through the school, pupils are exposed to an increasing range of texts through the use of Class novels, guided and free reading sessions, reading homework, on-line reading resources and our ‘100 books to read by the end of KS1 and KS2’ lending library schemes.
We strive to ensure that our curriculum is inclusive and adapted to address the needs of individual pupils as needed.
In addition to Core and Foundation subjects, within our curriculum we have a programme of activities across the school to develop resilience and build character, including weekly Forest School sessions and other outdoor learning sessions; keeping safe activities such as cycling proficiency, road safety and swimming; a wide range of performance opportunities such as class assemblies, school shows, Samba/African drumming and School of Rock and Pop and opportunities to experience volunteering and membership, including a wide range of whole school and small group fundraisers, enterprise activities and House teams.
We have a number of theme weeks throughout the year to promote particular areas of learning that we believe are a priority for our pupils as we prepare them for life beyond primary school. These include: Parliament Week, an annual ‘One Britain’ week where pupils participate in a range of activities to promote equality and to help them gain a good understanding of the diversity of our country and community plus Science and Enterprise & Careers weeks which allow pupils to consider future careers, find out about the world of work and work on a number of team building/enterprise activities.