Welcome to Drayton Park Primary School. We are a vibrant community school, in the heart of Highbury and Islington. Our families come from a very broad range of backgrounds and we pride ourselves on our shared commitment to each other and our school. We care deeply about nurturing our children as individuals, ensuring all can be happy and thrive as learners and friends. At Drayton Park, we are all about learning, community, and creativity.
We pride ourselves on being an inclusive school. Our community is fantastically diverse. We aim to help children develop strong personal identities, as well as empathy and respect for others. It is our shared commitment to understanding and supporting each other that brings us together. Inclusivity is also about the expectations we have of pupils. We believe very strongly that children's ability is not a set thing. We respond to pupils' current capabilities in innovative ways. We give children choice in their learning, enabling us to provide personal feedback and support. We also challenge children's expectations of themselves. Where children have limited ambitions or a limited sense of their abilities, we intend to open them up to possibility and potential. We have high expectations of everyone at Drayton Park. Crucially, we teach children to have high expectations of themselves.
Our curriculum is rich and creative, including specialist teaching in art, dance, and drama, Spanish, and PE. We run an exciting program of clubs, ranging from ice-skating to woodcraft, history, sewing, and cooking. Three years ago we built a separate art and community building, from which we run a broad range of family learning events, including a 'stay and play facility.
We know that your child's years in Primary school and your relationship with us as parents are immensely important. In many ways, this will be the most formative time in your child's life. We will be working with you to help your child grow from nursery age, through to the verge of secondary school. We consider that responsibility to be a huge privilege. At Drayton Park, your child will learn, get creative, make friends, have fun and be happy. You will see their world expand enormously.
Learning in the EYFS framework is defined into seven areas, three prime areas, and four specific areas. We focus on developing the children's skills in the prime areas first, and then the specific areas.
Our work in the Early Years Foundation Stage emphasizes the value of play as the medium through which a child achieves most in the Early Years. Play motivates children to learn and helps them make sense of the world through direct experience. Through play, children can encounter all areas of the curriculum and develop their growing social skills. Through careful planning, we ensure that the children have a wide range of challenging and stimulating experiences and play opportunities, which will excite their curiosity, interest, and motivation.
Planning includes outdoor play, which promotes and enables physical activities, encourages social and moral development and self-esteem and confidence, as well as providing for children who learn better outside and allowing children time to consolidate skills they have learned.
When planning for learning experiences and activities through play, we start with the child. We look at their needs, background, previous experiences, and stages of development. Starting with the child ensures that all children are included in all activities and not denied opportunities because of gender, cultural background, social circumstances, or special needs. We believe in equal access to the curriculum for all children. We also believe that children learn best when things have real meaning for them, so we plan for children's particular interests.
At Drayton Park, we follow the National Curriculum for Primary Schools. In years 1-6, we teach the curriculum through a series of topics, which change every half-term. As we are a one-and-a-half form entry school, with some mixed-age classes, we run our topics on a two-year cycle, so no child repeats a topic. Each topic is run across the three classes in a 'Phase', so the children in Years 1 and 2 do the same topic together, as do those in Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6.
At Drayton Park, children are given opportunities to learn about and discuss issues such as healthy eating, Fair Trade, and ethical purchasing, energy consumption, and recycling. Opportunities for learning about sustainability are embedded in the statutory National Curriculum subjects of citizenship, design, and technology, geography, and science, although it is a topic that cuts across all subjects.
At Drayton Park we engage in a rigorous self-assessment process, looking at all aspects of our work. A key indicator of our performance is how well our pupils achieve academically. In particular, we judge pupils' outcomes in reading, writing, and maths and compare our results to those of other schools.
