Five Elms is a community primary school with children from the ages of 3-11. The school provides places for nursery, reception, and years 1-6 and has an Additional Resource Provision (ARP) for deaf children. Currently, we have approximately, 520 pupils on roll. We are situated in Wood Lane, Dagenham, and 14 miles east of Central London near Becontree Heath. Five Elms Primary School is a good school, where children make rapid progress and attain high educational standards, despite facing many challenging circumstances. At Five Elms, we firmly believe in working in close partnership with you to ensure that your child’s time here is happy and successful – both academically and personally.
We want everyone to be involved in learning, aim for achievement at their highest possible level and to experience and celebrate success. We want to promote an environment in which everyone feels happy, safe, and secure. It is a place where children are confident, caring and articulate, and able to use their abilities to the full.
We provide a calm and happy atmosphere and set high standards of respect, courtesy, hard work, and achievement for all children and adults. At the heart of our ethos is CREAM (Can do, Resilience, Expectation, Aspiration, and Motivation.) Our rules are based upon these concepts and we ensure that children understand their rights and responsibilities.
The school has an enthusiastic and committed staff. Class teachers work with nursery nurses and teaching assistants to meet the needs of all children and we have several specialist teachers to help us deliver a challenging and creative curriculum. The school administrative staff, premises manager, lunchtime supervisors, cleaners, kitchen staff, and other support staff are all here to help. Everyone involved with the school is a valued and respected member of our school community. We are very proud of the social and cultural diversity of our school. The children and staff come from over forty different countries and we celebrate the richness that this brings to the school. This diversity is reflected in our curriculum, our policies and procedures, and our school environment.
Five Elms Additionally Resourced Provision, (ARP), for Deaf Children, is part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham’s local offer for children with SEND and is within, and very much part of, Five Elms Primary School in Wood Lane, Dagenham. The ARP caters to 20 (FTE) deaf children who have a moderate, severe, or profound permanent hearing loss in both ears with an associated language delay. The children are supported by a team of Teachers of the Deaf, Education Communication Support Workers, and Speech and Language Therapists.
The communication approach in the ARP can be described as ‘Total Communication’ and in the context of Five Elms ARP, this broadly means that sign language is used simultaneously with spoken English. The range of children’s needs within the ARP means that the approach to communication is as an individual to each child as possible, with some children only using speech to some children who have British Sign Language as their first language. The majority of children use speech to communicate, with as much sign language as they need to support their communication and learning. All the children have weekly speech and language therapy with their Speech and Language Therapist plus a weekly follow-up session with an Education Communication Support Worker.
Five Elms is a larger than an average-sized primary school with more than 500 children on the roll. The proportion of our children known to be eligible for free school meals is around twice the national average and our deprivation indicator is also well above average, giving evidence of the level of social and economic deprivation in the area we serve. Our pupils come from predominantly White British and Black African families as well as from a range of other minority ethnic backgrounds. There is a growing Lithuanian community (about 16%). Nearly half of our children are learning to speak English as an additional language and, of these, the majority join with little or no English. We have an Additionally Resourced Provision with 20 places for pupils with deaf and complex needs. In this provision, there are currently 20 children aged three to 11. Since September 2015 the school runs the borough outreach service for deaf children in mainstream provision. A higher proportion of pupils than usual join or leave the school at other than the expected times. Pupils start school below national expectations in literacy and numeracy.
At Five Elms we seek to work with children, parents and carers, the local education authority, and appropriate agencies to reduce or barriers wherever possible. The purpose of the Pupil Premium is to help support those students from low-income and deprived families to ensure that they attain and make progress at an equal rate to their peers especially in Maths and English. We employ additional teachers and HLTAs who provide extra interventions to PP children. We employ learning mentors who provide pastoral and emotional support to children in school.
